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

    Don’t cocoon a kid who has a concussion

    Parents should fight the urge to limit kids’ activities after a concussion.

  2. Health & Medicine

    It’s time to retire the five-second rule

    Wet food can slurp bacteria off the floor in less than a second.

  3. Neuroscience

    Jeremy Freeman seeks to simplify complex brain science

    As a group leader at the Janelia Research Campus, Jeremy Freeman is equal parts neuroscientist, computer coder and data visualization whiz.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Activity trackers fall short in weight-loss trial

    In a two-year study, wearable activity monitors didn’t help young adults lose more weight.

  5. Neuroscience

    Brain’s physical structure may help guide its wiring

    The brain’s stiffness helps dictate how nerve cells grow, a study suggests.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Maybe you don’t need to burp your baby

    Everybody does it. But burping babies after a meal may not cut down on crying or spit-ups, a study suggests.

  7. Neuroscience

    Brain training can alter opinions of faces

    Covert neural training could shift people’s opinions of faces.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Doctors need better ways to figure out fevers in newborns

    When a very young baby gets a fever, doctors scramble to figure out the cause. A new type of test may ultimately help identify whether the culprit is bacterial or viral.

  9. Neuroscience

    New Alzheimer’s drug shows promise in small trial

    A much-anticipated Alzheimer’s drug shows promise in a new trial, but experts temper hope with caution.

  10. Neuroscience

    GluMI cells are anything but

    GluMI cells are no downers in the retina.

  11. Neuroscience

    Cool nerve cells help mice beat heat

    A new study pinpoints fever-busting cells in mice’s brains.

  12. Neuroscience

    What Donkey Kong can tell us about how to study the brain

    Neuroscience tools failed to reveal much about a simple microprocessor. What can they really tell us about the brain?