Sensory inputs are crucial to drive all the movements and postural adjustments that we make, whether this be for controlling the forces of the finger and thumb to hold a pen, standing and moving our arms to gesture while talking, or using our breathing muscles to speak or talk. Our laboratories have a long-standing interest in three fundamental aspects of sensory and motor control. First, how do our proprioceptive senses contribute to control movements and postural adjustments, second, how does the brain drive the motoneurones and muscles, particularly under circumstances when the muscle's performance changes, such as during fatigue, and third, how is human breathing controlled. Much of our work is at the interface between human neurophysiology and translation into understanding pathophysiology in a many clinical conditions, including stroke, spinal cord injury and respiratory disorders.
Simon Gandevia (MD PhD DSc FAA FRACP) trained initially with Ian McCloskey at the University of New South Wales. He has broad research interests in human movement control and he has used a wide range of techniques to examine fundamental aspects of pathophysiology in human neuroscience. Professor Gandevia is one of four Founding Scientists of NeuRA; Founding Member of the Governing Board of Symbion Clinical Research Imaging Centre at NeuRA; Co-Director of the Spinal Injuries Research Centre, NeuRA; and Clinical Neurophysiologist at Prince of Wales Hospital. He has served on many editorial boards including the Journal of Physiology and is currently Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Physiology. His clinical work involves patients with neuromuscular disorders and those with spinal cord injury.
Click here to access Professor Simon Gandevia's research papers:
Control of the neural drive to human breathing musclesOur recent studies of the control of breathing muscles have shown a strong link between neural drive and mechanical action of the muscle. |
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Control of the neural drive to human breathing muscles in disorders such as obstructive sleep apnoeaObstructive sleep apnoea is a sleep disorder that affects more than 4% of the population and can lead to symptoms from daytime drowsiness to high blood pressure. |
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Studies of voluntary and involuntary control of human breathingBreathing is a complex motor task that needs to be coordinated at all times while we eat, speak, exercise and even during sleep. |
