Vaughan Macefield DSc, PhD

Prof Vaughan Macefield leads the Human Neurophysiology Lab in the Department of Neuroscience, having been at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute from 2018-2022. In 1986 he completed his Ph.D. in respiratory neurophysiology at The University of New South Wales, using animal models, before undertaking postdoctoral studies in human neurophysiology in Sydney, Sweden, and the US.

He was based at Neuroscience Research Australia in Sydney from 1994, before being appointed Foundation Chair of Integrative Physiology at the School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, from 2006-2016, and Foundation Chair of Physiology at Mohammed Bin Rashid University in Dubai from 2016-2017.

Vaughan specializes in recording from single nerve fibers via microelectrodes inserted into the peripheral nerves of awake human participants (microneurography) and is best known for developing the methodology for recording the firing properties of single, type-identified, sympathetic neurons supplying muscle and skin – as well as his work on the properties of mechanoreceptors in muscle and skin. Most recently, he made the first microelectrode recordings from the human vagus nerve, via ultrasound-guided microneurography.

For the last 20 years, he has also been using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain to identify cortical and subcortical structures involved in the control of blood pressure and the processing of pain and developed the methodology for recording muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) at the same time as performing fMRI of the brain (MSNA-coupled fMRI) in health and disease.