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

    Schools make fish smarter

    A study of consensus decision making shows that sticklebacks make wider choices in groups of three or more.

  2. Space

    NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander stops communicating

    NASA deems the mission a full success.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Itch

    When it comes to sensory information detected by the body, pain is king, and itch is the court jester. But that insistent, tingly feeling—satisfied only by a scratch—is anything but funny to the millions of people who suffer from it chronically.

  4. Chemistry

    First complete cancer genome sequenced

    With the entire genome sequence of a tumor now in hand, scientists may be able to start answering basic questions about cancer.

  5. Space

    MESSENGER glimpses Mercury’s Western hemisphere, new features

    The results are in from MESSENGER’s second flyby of Mercury, one of the least-explored planets in the solar system.

  6. Space

    Hubble back in action (for now)

    A main camera of the Hubble Space Telescope is back online.

  7. Space

    Try, try again

    NASA announced October 23 that, despite a series of setbacks, the prognosis is good for reviving the Hubble Space Telescope.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Closest look yet at lung cancer genes

    A large study offers clues to the genetics behind lung cancer.

  9. Life

    Avian airlines: Alaska to New Zealand nonstop

    Tracked bar-tailed godwits break previous nonstop flight record for birds.

  10. Space

    More problems with Hubble

    Hubble’s resurrection is suspended while engineers examine two anomalies.

  11. Earth

    Primordial soup lives again

    Fifty-five years later, new analyses of leftovers from Stanley Miller's famous 'primordial soup' experiment suggest that life could have originated near volcanoes.

  12. Space

    Hubble, heal thyself

    NASA scientists are cleared to remotely switch equipment on the Hubble Space Telescope in the hopes of restoring the orbiting observatory’s function by October 16.