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

    Rare neurons found in monkeys’ brains

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

  2. Health & Medicine

    Protein tweak may trigger Alzheimer’s

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

  3. Health & Medicine

    Test drug eases behavioral symptoms seen in autism

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

  4. 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.

  5. Brain not required for antidepressant to act

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

  6. Health & Medicine

    Rats avoiding mental workloads offer clues to lower motivation in depression

  7. Health & Medicine

    Attention tunes the mind’s ear

    Brain activity shows how one voice pattern stands out from the crowd.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Movie clips help ease drug craving

    Images of heroin may prove useful in treating addiction.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Why emotions are attention-getters

    Strong, direct connections between two key brain centers help explain how feelings can usurp focus.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Extreme eaters show abnormal brain activity

    Seeing images of food revs up reward areas in the obese and slows them down in severely underweight people, a brain scan study shows.

  11. Health & Medicine

    Jolt to brain aids language recovery

    Stroke patients treated with brain stimulation show improvement in language skills.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Brain scan foretells who will fold under pressure

    Tests on high-stakes math problems reveal key regions of brain activity linked to choking under pressure.