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

    It’s best if babies don’t drink their fruit as juice

    New guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend no fruit juice for babies younger than 1 year old.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Babies categorize colors the same way adults do

    Babies divide hues into five categories, much like adults, a result that suggests color categorization is built into the brain.

  3. Neuroscience

    Obscure brain region linked to feeding frenzy in mice

    Nerve cells in a little-studied part of the brain exert a powerful effect on eating, a mouse study suggests.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Drugs for reflux disease in infants may come with unintended consequences

    Infants prescribed proton-pump inhibitors for reflux disease may be at higher risk for broken bones later on.

  5. Health & Medicine

    40 more ‘intelligence’ genes found

    A study of nearly 80,000 people turns up 40 genes that may have a role in making brains smarter.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Toddlers’ screen time linked to speech delays and lost sleep, but questions remain

    Two new studies link handheld screen time for young children to less sleep and greater risk of expressive language delays. But the results are preliminary.

  7. Neuroscience

    A baby’s pain registers in the brain

    EEG recordings can help indicate whether a newborn baby is in pain, a preliminary study suggests.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Long naps lead to less night sleep for toddlers

    Daytime naps can steal sleep from the night, a small study of toddlers suggests.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Evidence is lacking that ‘cocooning’ prevents whooping cough in newborns

    In general, vaccinating adults who come into close contact with newborns is a good idea, but the practice on its own may not keep whooping cough away.

  10. Neuroscience

    Brain gains seen in elderly mice injected with human umbilical cord plasma

    Plasma from human umbilical cord blood refreshes aspects of learning and memory in mice.

  11. Health & Medicine

    Vaccinating pregnant women protects newborns from whooping cough

    Pregnant women who receive the pertussis, or whooping cough, vaccine pass on to their new-borns immunity to the potentially deadly bacterial infection.

  12. Humans

    Scientists seek early signs of autism

    The search for autism biomarkers, in the blood and the brain, is heating up.