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. Life

    Bacteria seen swimming the electron shuffle

    Researchers have captured the bacterium Shewanella’s behavior on film, and the microbes didn’t behave as expected

  2. Physics

    Chink found in armor of perfect cloak

    A theoretical perfect cloaking device could be foiled using charged particles, a new study suggests.

  3. Trawling the brain

    New findings raise questions about reliability of fMRI as gauge of neural activity.

  4. Chemistry

    Elusive triangular snowflakes explained

    Dust particles,wind and aerodynamics could steer some snowflakes toward a three-sided fate

  5. Physics

    How to mix oil and water

    Bouncing an oil-coated water droplet creates a tiny emulsion and reveals physics of mixing.

  6. Computing

    First programmable quantum computer created

    System uses ultracold beryllium ions to tackle 160 randomly chosen programs.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Bacteria flourish in favorite ecosystems on the human body

    Study offers most comprehensive inventory yet of the human microbiome and a basis for understanding how those microbes affect health.

  8. Life

    Birds’ eyes, not beaks, sense magnetic fields

    A new study pinpoints migratory songbirds’ magnetic compass in a specific brain region.

  9. Animals

    Junk food turns rats into addicts

    Bacon, cheesecake and Ho Hos elicit addictive behavior in rats similar to the behavior of rats addicted to heroin.

  10. Life

    People can control their Halle Berry neurons

    Researchers pinpoint individual brain cells that respond to particular people and objects.

  11. Magic for neuroscientists

    Magicians and neuroscientists may not seem like a likely match, but they have one important thing in common: A fascination with the brain, Science News reporter Laura Sanders reports in this blog filed from the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting in Chicago. As Science News pointed out in an article about science and magic in April, neuroscientists delve deep into the human mind to see how things like attention, perception and memory work, while magicians manipulate these very same things to confound their audience. This unlikely alliance was solidified October 17 at the Society for Neuroscience’s Annual Meeting in Chicago as two world-class magicians demonstrated some of their tricks to an audience of thousands of neuroscientists.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Exercise helps brains bounce back

    Study of rhesus monkeys shows running protects dopamine neurons from death.