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

    Abnormal sense of touch may play role in autism

    Autism-related genes are important for touch perception, a sense that may help the brain develop normally, a study of mice suggests.

  2. Neuroscience

    Morphine may make pain last longer

    Instead of busting pain, morphine lengthened the duration of pain in rats with a nerve injury.

  3. Neuroscience

    Alzheimer’s culprit may fight other diseases

    A notorious Alzheimer’s villain may help bust microbes.

  4. Neuroscience

    Wiping out gut bacteria impairs brain

    Antibiotics that wiped out gut bacteria curbed brain cell production in mice, a new study finds.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Here are a few more things for the childproofing list

    Some seemingly safe objects may be particularly dangerous for little kids.

  6. Neuroscience

    Bayesian reasoning implicated in some mental disorders

    An 18th century math theory may offer new ways to understand schizophrenia, autism, anxiety and depression.

  7. Neuroscience

    Brain waves in REM sleep help store memories

    Mice with disturbed REM sleep show memory trouble.

  8. Neuroscience

    Social area of the brain sets threat level of animals

    How people perceive an animal’s danger level is encoded in a particular wrinkle of cortex, a brain scan study suggests.

  9. Neuroscience

    A breakdown product, not ketamine, may ease depression

    Ketamine’s breakdown product, not the drug itself, eases depression, a mouse study suggests.

  10. Neuroscience

    Evidence conflicts on iron’s role in Parkinson’s disease

    Experiments yield conflicting results about whether vulnerable nerve cells have too much or too little iron.

  11. Science & Society

    Findings on wobbly memories questioned

    In contrast to older studies, new results suggest that new memories don’t interfere with older, similar ones.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Here’s some slim science on temper tantrums

    Scientists have mapped the structure of toddlers’ tantrums, but preventives are hard to come by.