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. Genetics

    Guidelines call for limits to whole genome testing for fetuses

    Powerful tests offer unprecedented detail about fetal genomes. But whole-genome tests aren’t ready for widespread use yet, doctors caution.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Should you bank your baby’s umbilical cord blood? Here’s a guide for thinking through the issue.

    The professionals have advice to give, but the decision is ultimately a personal one.

  3. Health & Medicine

    When deciding whether to bank your baby’s umbilical cord blood, consider these caveats

    Despite all the excitement, the cells found in cord blood may not be as useful as advertised.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Opioids kill. Here’s how an overdose shuts down your body

    Powerful opioids affect many parts of the body, but the drugs’ most deadly effects are on breathing.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Umbilical cord banking gets a lot of buzz. Why all the excitement?

    Here are the facts behind the promise of umbilical cord banking and cord blood transplants.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Hospital admissions show the opioid crisis affects kids, too

    Opioid-related hospitalizations for children are up, a sad statistic that shows the opioid epidemic doesn’t just affect adults.

  7. Neuroscience

    Brain waves may focus attention and keep information flowing

    Not just by-products of busy nerve cells, brain waves may be key to how the brain operates.

  8. Neuroscience

    The debate over how long our brains keep making new nerve cells heats up

    Adult humans don’t have newborn nerve cells in a memory-related part of the brain, a controversial paper suggests.

  9. Health & Medicine

    When it comes to baby’s growth, early pregnancy weight may matter more than later gains

    Women’s weight before and during the first half of pregnancy may be most important indicators of baby’s birth weight.

  10. Neuroscience

    Some flu strains can make mice forgetful

    Mice infected with influenza had memory problems a month later, a result that hints at a link between infections and brain performance.

  11. Health & Medicine

    A new study eases fears of a link between autism and prenatal ultrasounds

    On almost every measure, prenatal ultrasounds doesn’t appear to be related to a risk of developing autism, a recent study finds.

  12. Neuroscience

    Watch nerve cells being born in the brains of living mice

    For the first time, scientists have seen nerve cells being born in the brains of adult mice.