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

    Frequent liars show less activity in key brain structure

    Brain activity changed as people lied more, a new study finds.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Screen time guidelines for kids give parents the controls

    New recommendations for children’s media use are more nuanced than earlier guidelines, a change that reflects the shifting technology landscape.

  3. Health & Medicine

    ‘Three-parent baby’ boy healthy so far

    A baby boy born with donor mitochondrial DNA seems to be healthy, researchers report at a meeting.

  4. Neuroscience

    Mice smell, share each other’s pain

    Pain can jump from one mouse to another, presumably through chemicals detected by the nose.

  5. Neuroscience

    Out-of-sync body clock causes more woes than sleepiness

    The ailment, called circadian-time sickness, can be described with Bayesian math, scientists propose.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Baby-led weaning is safe, if done right

    Babies who fed themselves solid foods, called baby-led weaning, were no more likely to choke than spoon-fed babies, a new study finds.

  7. Animals

    Hot and spicy pain signals get blocked in naked mole-rats

    Naked mole-rats have a protein that interrupts pain signal.

  8. Animals

    Hot and spicy pain signals get blocked in naked mole-rats

    Naked mole-rats have a protein that interrupts pain signal.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Don’t cocoon a kid who has a concussion

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

  10. Health & Medicine

    It’s time to retire the five-second rule

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

  11. 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.

  12. 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.