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

    Male DNA found in female brains

    Postmortem sampling suggests fetal cells can slip through the blood-brain barrier.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Gamblers go all-in on Ritalin

    Risk-taking may rise when healthy people use the stimulant to boost concentration.

  3. Neuroscience

    Copycat mentality may be a hardwired way for animals to learn to avoid others’ mistakes

    Copycat mentality may be a hardwired way for animals to learn to avoid others’ mistakes.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Brain’s white matter diminished in isolated mice

    Experiments may offer a biological explanation for the social and emotional problems of neglected children.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Military combat marks the brain

    Regions involved in memory and attention changed after soldiers' deployment, though most eventually returned to their pre-combat state.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Brain learns while you snooze

    Mind can make associations between smells and sounds during sleep.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Brain’s hidden sewers revealed

    Specialized cells host a hitherto unknown cleansing system.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Monkey brains sensitive to others’ flubs

    Some of the brain’s nerve cells are programmed to light up only upon witnessing another’s error.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Alzheimer’s protein could help in MS

    A-beta, the same molecule that has been tied to dementia when it accumulates in the brain, appears to reduce damage when introduced to the bodies of mice with symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

  10. Neuroscience

    fMRI’s birthday lesson: Don’t ignore weird things you don’t understand

  11. Health & Medicine

    News Briefs: Body & Brain

    How deaf people process other senses, a gene variant that protects against Alzheimer's, and special cells that wrap and feed neural extensions

  12. Health & Medicine

    The Brain Set Free

    Lifting neural constraints could turn back time, making way for youthful flexibility.