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

    A new way for blind mice to see

    A new type of prosthetic eye can analyze patterns of cell activity to reproduce images similar to those produced in normal vision.

  2. Quantum weirdness

    Here are some key concepts in quantum mechanics experiments — and how those concepts play out in the real world.

  3. Quantum Physics

    Everyday Entanglement

    Physicists are taking quantum weirdness out of the lab.

  4. Physics

    Entanglement loophole closed

    A long-distance experiment rejects a challenge to quantum physics.

  5. Health & Medicine

    The fingers don’t lie

    The brain has at least two copy editors, typing experiments show.

  6. Tech

    Mind over machine

    People control a computer through electrodes implanted in their brains.

  7. Tech

    Robots can use coffee as a picker-upper

    A gripper made of a bag of loose grains has advantages over grasping devices that use individual digits.

  8. Book Review: Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions by Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, with Sandra Blakeslee

    Review by Laura Sanders.

  9. Math

    Marathoning made easy

    Or at least endurable, by calculating and then keeping to a physiologically sustainable pace.

  10. Life

    Gene therapy for depression

    Researchers were able to reduce pathological behaviors in mice by delivering genetic material to a particular brain region.

  11. Health & Medicine

    How being deaf can enhance sight

    Hearing-specialized brain regions can adapt to processing visual input, cat experiments show.

  12. Sleep Gone Awry

    Researchers inch closer to causes, cures for insomnia, narcolepsy.