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

    Defining normal in the brain

    A new growth curve paves way for scans to be used to spot early signs of autism, schizophrenia or other disorders.

  2. Life

    Microbe’s survival manual

    Researchers have uncovered how D. radiodurans can withstand extreme radiation.

  3. Physics

    String theory entangled

    Scientists forge an intriguing mathematical link between black holes and the physics of the very small.

  4. Neuroanatomy down on the farm

    Researchers retreat to bucolic surroundings for brain cell-mapping competition.

  5. Physics

    Very tiny, very cool

    Physicists outline a scheme to build a ‘refrigerator’ that can cool to near absolute zero and is based on only a few particles.

  6. Chemistry

    How to bug bugs

    New insights on how insect repellents work could eventually help scientists prevent the transmission of diseases like malaria.

  7. Earth

    Tsunami triggered by one-two punch

    Geologists report the first recorded observation of an unusual earthquake sequence.

  8. Physics

    As the icicle turns

    Drip by drip, a new machine freezes out an existing theory.

  9. Chemistry

    Superconductors go fractal

    Oxygen atoms arrange themselves in a self-similar pattern to help conduct electricity without resistance.

  10. Humans

    Whiffs of stiffs

    Forensic scientists develop a new way to find where the bodies are buried.

  11. Physics

    Blog: Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle still certain

    Despite rumors to the contrary, a mainstay of quantum physics is just as (un)certain as ever.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Violent dreams may predict illness in advance

    A sleep disorder can precede neurodegenerative disease by decades.