Anina Rich
Anina Rich brings the lens of a cognitive neuroscientist to health coverage, focusing on how attention, perception and unusual sensory experiences shape everyday life. Her work at The Conversation sits at the intersection of neuroscience and practical wellbeing, using research on synaesthesia, focus and smartphone use to explain why minds work differently and what people can change in their routines. She writes as a professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow who leads a synaesthesia research group, which gives her coverage a depth that goes beyond generic health reporting.
Attention, distraction and everyday focus
In her article on struggling to pay attention, Rich examines why sustaining focus is difficult amid constant digital interruptions and task-switching. She sets out the idea of building “attention muscles” and outlines concrete adjustments such as using phone focus modes, limiting notifications, batching message checking and tracking screen time with tools that discourage use rather than gamifying it. The piece explains research showing that immersive activities like playing music or competitive sport can strengthen sustained attention, and that good sleep habits and reduced device use before bed improve focus the next day. She also highlights the cognitive value of letting the mind wander instead of reflexively reaching for a device, linking everyday habits to underlying processes of information integration and creativity.
In conversations about consciousness and attention, she extends this theme by discussing how smartphones interact with attentional systems, inner speech and other aspects of conscious experience. Across these contributions she frames attention not as a simple matter of willpower but as a property of neural systems that can be supported or undermined by environment and routine.
Synaesthesia and unusual perceptual experiences
Rich’s other major strand of public writing explores synaesthesia, the condition where stimuli in one sensory modality trigger experiences in another, such as tasting words or seeing colours when hearing sounds. In her explainer on the neuroscience of synaesthesia, co-authored for The Conversation, she outlines how these cross-sensory links arise, what brain imaging reveals about connectivity in synaesthetes, and how these experiences fit into broader questions about perception and consciousness. The article demystifies synaesthesia for non-specialists while stressing that it is a stable, genuine trait rather than a metaphor or curiosity.
On broadcast segments devoted to the phenomenon of synaesthesia, she further breaks down how these atypical experiences develop and what they reveal about the construction of sensory reality. Across media she returns to concrete examples—such as specific grapheme–colour pairings or taste associations—to root abstract neuroscience in vivid everyday descriptions. This focus on unusual yet healthy variants of perception distinguishes her health coverage from material that concentrates solely on disorder or deficit.
Translating cognitive neuroscience for general audiences
Rich’s academic role shapes how she writes about health and the mind. She is a professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow who leads a dedicated synaesthesia research group at Macquarie University, working within centres focused on perception, performance and expertise. Her public-facing pieces carry over the clarity of experimental design: they define key terms, explain what specific studies show and draw a line between those findings and practical implications for attention, technology use and sensory experience.
She collaborates on articles, pairing expertise in cognitive neuroscience with co-authors from psychological sciences, which keeps the coverage anchored in current research while broadening the clinical and behavioural framing. Outside print, she appears on podcasts and radio programs that tackle consciousness, aphantasia, inner speech, vicarious touch and childhood development, giving her a wider repertoire than a typical health reporter who focuses on news cycles or lifestyle trends. This combination of lab-based authority, cross-sensory topics and everyday language makes her a specialist voice on how the brain’s attentional and perceptual systems shape daily health and experience.
4 more health journalists.
Abida Tasnim
Abida Tasnim is a health writer for The Daily Star who focuses on clear, practical guidance that helps readers recognise risks early and act before everyday illnesses turn into wider public health problems. She reports on infectious disease prevention, using measles coverage to show how outbreaks start with individual decisions and behaviours, not just hospital statistics. Her work explains what happens during an outbreak and then anchors the story in simple steps people can take, such as avoiding crowded places when symptoms appear, practising good hygiene, and seeking medical advice early. She writes direct, action‑oriented health explainers that turn clinical questions about contagion and disease burden into everyday choices. Across her beat, she stresses early recognition, timely care, and prevention as the foundations of healthier communities.
Adrián Carballo Casla
Adrián Carballo Casla stands out for turning complex cohort data on ageing into clear, food‑level advice on what older adults should eat to protect brain health and slow chronic disease. He is a researcher in nutritional epidemiology focused on ageing and chronic disease prevention and a postdoctoral researcher in geriatric epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet, writing health explainers for The Conversation. He reports on how diet quality, especially Mediterranean and Mind‑style patterns, shapes dementia risk, grey matter loss and neurocognitive ageing, and how healthy versus pro‑inflammatory diets alter multimorbidity trajectories. His articles translate findings on flavonoids, polyphenols, folate, omega‑3 fats and dietary nitrates into specific food choices and small, practical changes. Much of his coverage is anchored in his own studies on multimorbidity, high‑risk older adults and tailored dietary recommendations, often syndicated to other outlets.
Ahmed Elbediwy
Ahmed Elbediwy brings a lab-based understanding of cancer biology and clinical biochemistry to public-facing health reporting, linking drug mechanisms and molecular pathways to everyday choices about medicines and products. He writes for The Conversation on weight-loss injections, cancer overdiagnosis and anti-ageing supplements, focusing on obesity medicine, cancer signalling, screening trade-offs, skincare and supplement science. His pieces on GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro explain why some people do not respond, how gut hormones and appetite signals work, and where psychological support and nutrition fit alongside prescriptions. He co-authors explainers on cancer risk and overdiagnosis and on whether supplements can reverse ageing, separating established knowledge from emerging research. An award-winning senior lecturer at Kingston University, he favours clear, structured explainers, careful definition of key terms and evidence-based appraisal over hype.
Amanda Sheppeard
Amanda Sheppeard is a managing editor and health journalist known for long, detailed explainers that connect complex clinical research, disability policy and political narratives with the daily realities of doctors and patients. She works at The Medical Republic across editorial leadership and commercial content while reporting widely on medicine for its specialist titles. Her real beat spans autism, disability policy, autoimmune disease, infectious threats and system pressures in primary care and hospitals. She covers subjects such as autism diagnosis and the NDIS, rheumatology’s clinical shifts, weight-loss agents in rheumatoid arthritis, infection control, antimicrobial resistance and new modalities like CAR T-cell therapy and microneedles. She reports by doing the synthesis inside the story, linking trial design, molecular targets, funding rules and policy changes to concrete decisions and workflows in clinics and hospitals.