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. Psychology

    Voter madness

    Sports outcomes can influence politicians’ performance at the polls.

  2. Safety in Numbers

    Mathematics offers innovative weapons for fighting terrorism.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Stem cells from blood a ‘huge’ milestone

    New technique promises to be easier, cheaper and faster than other harvesting methods.

  4. Space

    Making lemonade with quantum lemons

    Physicists produce “spooky action at a distance,” using a phenomenon that would usually disrupt it.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Snakes on the brain

    In a bizarre experiment, researchers delve into the neural roots of courage.

  6. Physics

    Physics in free fall

    Physicists drop supercold atoms down an elevator shaft to see what will happen.

  7. Physics

    Bouncing beads outwit Feynman

    Ratchet-and-pawl thought experiment whirs to life, extracting work from bouncing beads.

  8. Physics

    A giant proposal for a new type of molecule

    Atoms linked across vast distances, can point in two directions at once

  9. Humans

    2010 Kavli Prizes awarded

    The 2010 Kavli laureates in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience are named for work on powerful telescopes, neuron chatter molecules, building structures with DNA and a method for moving individual atoms.

  10. Materials Science

    Quantum photocells might cheat efficiency limits

    Factoring in quantum coherence could increase efficiency of harnessing sunlight in photovoltaic cells.

  11. Health & Medicine

    Tiny blood vessels expel clots by force

    A study in mice uncovers a new way that capillaries keep the flow going.

  12. Life

    Genome from a bottle

    Cells switch species when given synthetic DNA, an advance that could lead to designer organisms.