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. Humans

    Color this chimp amazing

    An extra layer of sensory perception called synesthesia might help ape make a monkey of humans on memory tests.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Why antipsychotics need time to kick in

    Insight into how some schizophrenia drugs work may explain why compounds that build up in the brain can take weeks to provide relief.

  3. Life

    Treatment helps paralyzed rats walk

    A combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and therapy can restore lost connections between lower limbs and brain.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Scientists shouldn’t get hooked on notion that obesity reflects addiction to food

  5. Health & Medicine

    Thou can’t not covet

    Wanting what others have may be hardwired in the brain, experiments suggest.

  6. Schizophrenia’s core genetic features proposed

    Researchers may be closing in on the inherited component of a disease whose causes have been difficult to establish.

  7. Life

    Gene study links stronger memories, PTSD

    New finding may help explain why some people experience psychological problems after traumatic experiences.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Rare neurons found in monkeys’ brains

    Cells linked to empathy and consciousness in primates may offer clues to human self-awareness.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Protein tweak may trigger Alzheimer’s

    An unusual version of the disease-linked amyloid-beta molecule sows destruction in mouse brains.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Test drug eases behavioral symptoms seen in autism

    In mouse experiments, the compound curbs repetitive behaviors and improves sociability.

  11. Health & Medicine

    Snakes swirl in blink (and jump) of an eye

    The Rotating Snakes optical illusion is preceded by blinking and tiny ocular movements, a new study shows.

  12. Brain not required for antidepressant to act

    In brewer’s yeast, the drug sertraline distorts membranes and triggers a self-cannibalizing process.