We don’t normally have to think about our breathing and that’s because breathing is handled by a subconscious part of the brain called the medulla. The medulla automatically controls our breathing as well as our heart rate and blood pressure (Del Negro et al. 2018). It sends neural signals to the […]
Over the past 4.5 years, researchers from all over the world have written non-technical summaries on their research for the Motor Impairment Blog. Consequently, the Blog contains a rich archive of information on topics such as muscle strength and weakness, falls and balance, sensation, pain, motor control, and research methods. […]
When you take a breath, many muscles in your body contract in a coordinated pattern to let air flow in and out of your lungs. While most of the muscular work for breathing is done by the diaphragm muscle in the abdomen, the muscles in the upper airway also play […]
Most of the time, our breathing is controlled involuntarily so that we don’t need to consciously think about breathing in and out all the time (for reviews, see Feldman & Del Negro, 2006; Richter & Smith, 2014). However, there are many instances where we need to voluntarily control how fast […]
Over 15 000 times every day we draw air into the lungs by expansion of the chest wall and abdomen; we breathe. This movement occurs by activation of inspiratory muscles from electrical signals from the brain to the respiratory motoneurones in the spinal cord. There are many inspiratory muscles that can […]
