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

    Moms tweak the timbre of their voice when talking to their babies

    Mothers shift the timbre, or quality, of their voice when talking to their babies, a change that happens in many different languages.

  2. Animals

    To understand the origins of pain, ask a flatworm

    A danger-sensing protein responds to hydrogen peroxide in planarians, results that hint at the evolutionary origins of people’s pain sensing.

  3. Neuroscience

    There’s no rest for the brain’s mapmakers

    Navigational grid cells stay on the job during sleep.

  4. Neuroscience

    New book offers a peek into the mind of Oliver Sacks

    The wide-ranging essays in Oliver Sacks’ ‘The River of Consciousness’ contemplate evolution, memory and more.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Parenting advice gets a fact-check

    A new website called Parentifact attempts to fight parenting misinformation.

  6. Neuroscience

    Kay Tye improvises to understand our inner lives

    To figure out how rich mental lives are created by the brain, neuroscientist Kay Tye applies “a new level of neurobiological sophistication.”

  7. Health & Medicine

    Seeing an adult struggle before succeeding inspires toddlers to persevere too

    When 15-month-olds watched an adult struggle and then succeed, the toddlers were more likely to try harder themselves, a study found.

  8. Health & Medicine

    From day one, a frog’s developing brain is calling the shots

    Frog brains help organize muscle and nerve patterns early in development.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Telling children they’re smart could tempt them to cheat

    Kids who were praised for being smart were more likely to cheat, two studies suggest.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Help for postpartum mood disorders can be hard to come by

    A new survey suggests that many postpartum women who suffer from depression, anxiety and other mood disorders don’t get the help they need.

  11. Health & Medicine

    Sugars in breast milk may fight harmful bacteria directly

    A small study finds that the sugars present in some women’s breast milk may fight potentially harmful bacteria.

  12. Neuroscience

    Brain chemical lost in Parkinson’s may contribute to its own demise

    A dangerous form of the chemical messenger dopamine causes cellular mayhem in the very nerve cells that make it.