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

    Live Wires

    Cells reach out and touch each other with tunneling nanotubes.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Reading the patterns of spatial memories

    Researchers can tell where participants are standing in a virtual world by “seeing” memories of the journey.

  3. Earth

    Buckyballs do antimicrobial magic

    A new study shows that soccer-ball–shaped carbon nanoparticles can prevent biofilm from gunking up water filters.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Chemotherapy drug may in fact strengthen some cancer cells

    Research shows a standard drug for treating brain cancer can actually make some cells more aggressive.

  5. Health & Medicine

    One protein mediates damage from high-fructose diet

    A study in mice suggests that a liver protein mediates the harmful effects of consuming too much fructose, an increasingly common aspect of Western diets.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Out-of-sync days throw heart and metabolism out of whack

    When people sleep may be just as important as how much they sleep. Altered sleep patterns can lead to heart disease and diabetes, a new study suggests.

  7. Life

    Prions complicit in Alzheimer’s disease

    A study in mice suggests a version of prion proteins, which are known to cause the brain-wasting mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases, may also play a role in neuron malfunction.

  8. Health & Medicine

    MRSA has its day in the sun

    Beachgoers may be exposed to antibiotic-resistant microbe strain in sea and sand, but there appears to be no link to infection.

  9. Humans

    Coupons help evaluate game of Go

    Variant version of ancient board game Go allows researchers to see how players value their moves, possibly providing clues to the math behind complex games like chess.

  10. Life

    Sponge’s secret weapon restores antibiotics’ power

    A chemical from an ocean-dwelling sponge can reprogram antibiotic resistant bacteria to make them vulnerable to medicines again, new evidence suggests.

  11. Science & Society

    Kids’ gestures foretell better vocabularies

    Toddlers who gesture more at age 14 months possess larger vocabularies when entering school, new research finds.

  12. Humans

    For gamblers’ brains, almost counts

    In an experiment mimicking slot machines, people’s brains reacted similarly to almost winning as to winning, possibly explaining why gambling can be addictive.