Integrative Physiology

Integrative Physiology - Computer Screen

Professor Vaughan Macefield
Senior Lecturer:  Dr David Mahns

Professor Vaughan Macefield

Prof Vaughan Macefield is Foundation Chair of Integrative Physiology at the School of Medicine, University of Western Sydney, and a Conjoint Senior Principal Research Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia. A former NMHRC Senior Research Fellow, he completed his PhD in neurophysiology at UNSW in 1986, and undertook advanced training in human neurophysiology in Sweden and the US, before establishing his own laboratories at Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in 1994.

Vaughan Macefield

Vaughan is also the NSW Convenor of the Australian Brain Bee Challenge, Australia's only neuroscience competition for high school students, and has participated in a number of events including Science in the Suburbs to promote science to school audiences.

Professor Macefield's Research

Professor Macefield specializes in recording from single nerve fibres via tungsten microelectrodes inserted into the peripheral nerves of awake human subjects, and is known nationally and internationally as a world expert in recording the firing properties of human sympathetic neurones (e.g. those supplying blood vessels) in health and disease and as a leading investigator in human sensorimotor control. In 1996 he was awarded the $10,000 Sunderland Award for “Excellence in Sensorimotor Biology.”

He has active collaborations with many groups in universities and hospitals in Australia and in Sweden and the USA, and has attracted postdoctoral scientists from Sweden, Denmark, Canada and Australia. For over 10 years Prof Macefield has been been examining the changes in control of the autonomic nervous system following human spinal cord injury. Over the last decade his research has extended into the study of pain and its effects on the autonomic and somatic nervous systems, using brain imaging techniques (fMRI) to study the processing of pain originating in muscle and skin.

His research is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and the Australian Research Council.

Professor Macefield's Team


  • Dr Rachael Brown, Associate Research Fellow. Rachael is currently using the technique of microneurography (a tungsten electrode inserted into a peripheral nerve to measure nerve traffic) to examine muscle sympathetic nerve activity in obese subjects to ascertain if their level of sympathetic nerve activity is increased or decreased in comparison to controls. This is part of an obesity study with the Garvan Institute to learn more about what causes insulin resistance, by studying what protects insulin sensitive obese subjects from developing metabolic disease. We aim to evaluate the contribution of the sympathetic nervous system to metabolic processes and define the role of this system in energy metabolism in humans with obesity.
  • Dr Paul Breen, Visiting Fellow. Dr Paul Breen received his BEng Degree in Computer Engineering (First Class Honours) in 2003 and his PhD in 2007, both from the University of Limerick. His PhD research investigated the application of Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation for blood flow assistance. He was awarded a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2007 from the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology to continue this work. In 2008 he was awarded a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has worked in collaborator labs at Roessingh Research & Development, Enschede, The Netherlands and Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. His current research interest involves investigating the potential of subsensory electrical noise as a treatment for the loss of sensory function. This work, supported by a Health Research Board Award, aims to restore lost neural functionality where it is impaired through neuropathy. Currently a Visiting Fellow at the University of Western Sydney, Dr Breen is using microneurograpy to investigate the neural response to this treatment paradigm.
  • Dr Ingvars Birznieks, Research Fellow. Ingvars' undertook his PhD at the University of Umea, Sweden, and has been in Sydney since 2005. His research interests revolve around sensorimotor processing, tactile sense, perception, tactile sensorimotor control of the human hand, dexterous manipulation of objects, haptic devices, pain mechanisms, functional and clinical consequences of somatosensory disorders in stroke patients. One of his signature research methods is microelectrode recordings from single tactile afferents and muscle spindle afferents in awake human subjects (human microneurography). In 2011 he was appointed Senior Lecturer in Physiology at the the School of Science and Health, UWS. His research network extends also to Neuroscience Research Australia, the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering and School of Medical Sciences at The University of New South Wales, as well as the School of Health Sciences at The University of Sydney.
  • Dr Chloe Taylor, Lecturer. Chloe undertook her PhD at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK and has been employed as a lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science at UWS since July 2011. Chloe's research focus is cardiovascular control, in particular the responses to physiological challenges such as exercise and orthostasis, and the effects of time and day. A key area of her research involves the assessment of cardiovagal and sympathetic baroreflex sensitivity and its role in blood pressure regulation with respect to these challenges. Chloe is currently conducting a study of inter-individual differences in blood pressure responses to mental and physical stressors, looking specifically at the effects of sex and ageing. She is also involved in a project using microneurography to measure sympathetic nerve activity to contracting muscles, exploring the roles of central command and the metaboreflex. 
  • Azharuddin Fazalbhoy, PhD student. Azharuddin is a M Osteopath graduate of UWS who is currently enrolled in a PhD program through UNSW, with the experimental work being undertaken in the School of Medicine, UWS. The project aims to examine the effects of tonic muscle pain, induced by infusion of hypertonic saline into a leg muscle, on muscle and cutaneous sympathetic outflow and on the fusimotor system. This work involves microelectrode recordings from the common peroneal nerve in awake human subjects.
  • Rania Fatouleh, PhD student. Rania's work aims to identify sites within the brain that are involved in the control of blood pressure at rest and look for any functional changes within the brain in patients with obstructive sleep apnea and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which both are characterized by elevated sympathetic drive. This involves concurrent recording of muscle sympathetic nerve activity using microneurography and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain. 
  • Elie Hammam, PhD student. Elie's overall interest lays in the examination of cardiovascular control. His current research involves the examination of structural changes in the brain of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). Employing microneurography and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brainstem and the wholebrain with heart failure patients allows us to further explore the neurophysiology of blood pressure control in health and disease. The study involves research before and after heart transplantation. In additional studies, Elie aims to understand how the vestibular system affects cardiovascular control. Slow movements of the body, such as those associated with sway in tall buildings may lead to motion sickness in certain individuals, which is heralded by decreases in skin blood flow and increases in sweating. The sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for control of blood pressure, skin blood flow and sweating, is assessed using the technique of microneurography whilst generating slow changes in vestibular inputs.
  • Khadigeh El Sayed, PhD student. Under Professor Vaughan Macefield's supervision, Khadigeh completed her Honours degree in 2011. Her project aimed at assessing the role of the vestibular system in cardiovascular control, which in turn, looked at how vestibular inputs from each side of the head modulate sympathetic nerve activity to muscle and skin. This was achieved by making bilateral recordings with the application of low-frequency (0.08Hz) sinusoidal Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (sGVS) using microneurography. Currently, her PhD project involves the investigation of inter-individual differences in muscle sympathetic nerve activity (via microneurography) and blood pressure responses to mental and physical stressors in healthy young males and females. Following this, she will also look at the effects of aging on these responses.
  • Daniel Boulton, PhD student. Daniel is a Sport and Exercise Science graduate who is investigating the effect of exercise intensity on the neuromuscular control of the cardiovascular system. Microneurography will be performed to analyse muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) and how it may contribute to a phenomenon termed functional sympatholysis. Microneurography will be used to collect data from a contracting as well as non-contracting leg.
  • Michael Leitch, Honours student. A graduate of the BMedSc program at UWS, Michael is currently undertaking Honours. The objective of his current research is to investigate the contractile properties of single human motor units using the technique of microstimulation. He will compare the contractile properties when stimulated with physiological trains of stimuli and with regular stimulus trains of identical mean frequency.


Dr David Mahns

Dr David Mahns is a Senior Lecturer in Integrative Physiology at the School of Medicine, University of Western Sydney. David completed his PhD in cardiovascular physiology at Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in 1999, before undertaking postdoctoral training in neurophysiology at the University of New South Wales and being appointed as a Lecture in Physiology at the University of New South Wales in 2003. In 2006 David established his own laboratories at the University of Western Sydney. 

Dr Mahns Research

In most circumstances we can readily distinguish between painful and non-painful stimuli. It is widely appreciated that non-painful and painful sensations rely on the activation of distinct groups (or classes) of sensory nerves. Despite this common perception,  it remains unclear whether distinguishing between innocuous (non-painful) and noxious (painful) stimuli result from the activation of single class of sensory nerves, convergence of inputs arising from multiple classes or the pattern of activation within the central nervous system. The broad aim of Dr Mahn's work is to define the contribution of different nerves (and central pathways) to pain arising from deep (e.g. viscera, muscle and bone) and superficial (skin) structures. In order achieve this his team is using a range of recoding techniques, that allow recording from individual nerve fibres, and psychophysical techniques that allow the group to better understand how the nervous system detects and relays information about pain.

David is the recipient of a current NHMRC project grant, Neural Mechanism of Bone Pain and a UWS Research Grant, Peripheral encoding of forces associated with manipulation by tactile afferents. He is involved in several research projects involving collaborations with Prof Macefield and Prof John Morley (University of Western Sydney), Dr Ingvars Birznieks (Neuroscience Research Australia), Dr Richard Vickery (University of New South Wales) and A/Prof Gustavo Duque and Dr Wei Li (University of Sydney).

Dr Mahns Team

  • Dr Saad Nagi, Research Fellow. What triggers the crossover between non-painful and painful sensations is yet to be fully elucidated especially in clinical pain-states such as allodynia, i.e. pain evoked by otherwise innocuous (tactile/cold) stimuli. Saad's research interests revolve around the mechanisms underlying the most intrinsic imprints of sentience such as touch, temperature and pain. Psychophysical tools are being employed in healthy and clinical individuals to explore the interplay of these sensations, and the role of different peripheral nerve fibres in coding of stimulus features. Recent investigations have demonstrated that a class of low-threshold unmyelinated mechanoreceptors, dubbed C-tactile fibres, mediates the crossover between pleasurable-touch and painful-touch, thereby unveiling a novel substrate of tactile allodynia, or more broadly pain modulation. Further investigations are under way with the aim of determining the response properties and innervation patterns of this afferent class, in addition to exploring the role of congnitive influences in pain modulation. 
  • Matthew Barton, PhD student. Matthew's work primarily will test in vivo a novel biocompatible bandage that adheres to nerves upon laser irradiation without the use of sutures. The bandage consists of FDA approved materials; comprising of an extracellular matrix (ECM) incorporating growth factors to enhance axon regeneration and a photochemical dye (RB) into the chitosan medium. The design of this bandage hopes to optimise axon regeneration following nerve anastomosis, whilst being a simple surgical procedure that will have numerous and diverse implications for the field of peripheral nerve and tissue repair.
  • Sumaiya Shaikh, PhD student. Is there a link between pain and affective sensations such as pleasure and unpleasantness? If so, what are the underlying neural mechanisms that link these two sensations? Sumaiya's Honours thesis was based on the integration of pain and affective touch and the contribution of sensory fibres (C-tactile) that mediate those sensations in humans. In the second part of her Honours project, behavioural tests were conducted on rats suffering from neuropathic pain which have undergone sutureless peripheral nerve repair. These tests determine the nerve growth, sensory function and motor function returning to normalcy over a period of time by measuring mechanical hyperalgesia, hot and cold allodynia on the operated arms in comparison to sham operated rats.