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

    Bacteria flourish in favorite ecosystems on the human body

    Study offers most comprehensive inventory yet of the human microbiome and a basis for understanding how those microbes affect health.

  2. Life

    Birds’ eyes, not beaks, sense magnetic fields

    A new study pinpoints migratory songbirds’ magnetic compass in a specific brain region.

  3. Animals

    Junk food turns rats into addicts

    Bacon, cheesecake and Ho Hos elicit addictive behavior in rats similar to the behavior of rats addicted to heroin.

  4. Life

    People can control their Halle Berry neurons

    Researchers pinpoint individual brain cells that respond to particular people and objects.

  5. Magic for neuroscientists

    Magicians and neuroscientists may not seem like a likely match, but they have one important thing in common: A fascination with the brain, Science News reporter Laura Sanders reports in this blog filed from the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in Chicago. As Science News pointed out in an article about science and magic in April, neuroscientists delve deep into the human mind to see how things like attention, perception and memory work, while magicians manipulate these very same things to confound their audience. This unlikely alliance was solidified October 17 at the Society for Neuroscience’s Annual Meeting in Chicago as two world-class magicians demonstrated some of their tricks to an audience of thousands of neuroscientists.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Exercise helps brains bounce back

    Study of rhesus monkeys shows running protects dopamine neurons from death.

  7. Computing

    Quantum computers could tackle enormous linear equations

    New work suggests that the envisioned systems would be powerful enough to quickly process even trillions of variables.

  8. Chemistry

    New view reveals how DNA fits into cell

    A new technique allows scientists to map the 3-D structure of the entire human genome.

  9. Life

    Mitochondria behind life span extension

    Study in flies suggests low-protein diet works through power-producing organelles.

  10. Paleontology

    Parasite may have felled a mighty T. rex

    An infection known to afflict modern birds may have led to starvation in several dinosaurs.

  11. Life

    Better sensing through empty receptors

    A new model suggests cells may be more sensitive to their environment than previously thought.

  12. Space

    Entanglement in the macroworld

    A team finds “spooky action at a distance” in superconductors big enough to be seen with the naked eye.