Laura Sanders

Laura Sanders

Senior Writer, Neuroscience

Laura Sanders reports on neuroscience for Science News. She wrote Growth Curve, a blog about the science of raising kids, from 2013 to 2019 and continues to write about child development and parenting from time to time. She earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she studied the nerve cells that compel a fruit fly to perform a dazzling mating dance. Convinced that she was missing some exciting science somewhere, Laura turned her eye toward writing about brains in all shapes and forms. She holds undergraduate degrees in creative writing and biology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where she was a National Merit Scholar. Growth Curve, her 2012 series on consciousness and her 2013 article on the dearth of psychiatric drugs have received awards recognizing editorial excellence.

All Stories by Laura Sanders

  1. Health & Medicine

    Infant stress linked to teen brain changes

    Girls, but not boys, showed later changes in brain regions that regulate emotions.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Your brain on speed dating

    Activity in two regions helps calculate compatibility with potential mates.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Monkeys keep the beat without outside help

    Nerve cells in the brain may regulate a precise sense of internal time-keeping.

  4. Health & Medicine

    An enlightened idea

    Technique lights up neurons at work in living animals.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Same neurons at work in sleep and under anesthesia

    Drugs boost activity in nerve cells that usually induce a slumber.

  6. Neuroscience

    Highlights from Neuroscience 2012

    A collection of reports from the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, New Orleans.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Suicidal Threads

    Early abuse weaves its way into the brain, with potentially tragic consequences.

  8. Neuroscience

    Drug helps put bad memories to rest

    A brain injection before sleep aids fearful mice — and might lead to a PTSD treatment strategy.

  9. Neuroscience

    Teens can keep their cool to win rewards

    An unexpected experimental result suggests adolescent impulsivity is not inevitable.

  10. Neuroscience

    To understand meetings of minds, scientists should study brains in the wild

  11. Humans

    Car-crazy kid wins middle school science competition

    First place at Broadcom MASTERS goes to 14-year-old who studied automotive aerodynamics.

  12. Humans

    Building a funner mousetrap

    Middle school science champs solve problems with style.