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. Neuroscience

    A new experiment didn’t find signs of dreaming in brain waves

    Brain activity that powers dreams may reveal crucial insight into consciousness, but a new study failed to spot evidence of the neural flickers.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Being bilingual is great. But it may not boost some brain functions

    A large study of U.S. bilingual children didn’t turn up obvious benefits in abilities to ignore distractions or switch quickly between tasks.

  3. Health & Medicine

    A cognitive neuroscientist warns that the U.S. justice system harms teen brains

    The U.S. justice system holds adolescents to adult standards, and puts young people in situations that harm their development, a researcher argues.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Measles erases the immune system’s memory

    The measles virus can usher in other infections for months, or even years.

  5. Health & Medicine

    A mysterious dementia that mimics Alzheimer’s gets named LATE

    An underappreciated form of dementia that causes memory trouble in older people gets a name: LATE.

  6. Health & Medicine

    A neural implant can translate brain activity into sentences

    With electrodes in the brain, scientists translated neural signals into speech, which could someday help the speechless speak.

  7. Neuroscience

    The herbal supplement kratom comes with risks

    The supplement kratom can cause heart racing and agitation.

  8. Neuroscience

    Dead pig brains bathed in artificial fluid showed signs of cellular life

    Four hours after pigs died, the animals’ brain cell activity was restored by a sophisticated artificial system.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Ketamine cultivates new nerve cell connections in mice

    In mice, ketamine prods nerve cells to connect, which may explain the hallucinogenic drug’s ability to ease depression.

  10. Neuroscience

    Our brains sculpt each other. So why do we study them in isolation?

    Studying individual brains may not be the way to figure out the human mind, a social neuroscientist argues.

  11. Health & Medicine

    When an older person’s brain waves are in sync, memory is boosted

    A brain stimulation treatment that nudges older people’s brain waves into sync could lead to noninvasive therapies for dementia and other disorders.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Pumping may be linked to an altered microbial mix in breast milk

    Beneficial bacteria are more abundant in the milk of mothers whose babies feed straight from the breast.