Anna Hudson

My research aims to understand respiratory physiology and the extent and nature of respiratory motor impairment, for example in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and healthy ageing. I use a multi-faceted approach to investigate the neural control of breathing such as electromyography to assess respiratory muscle activity, electroencephalography to assess brain activity and respiratory sensation and ultrasound for respiratory muscle mechanics.

I am most well known for single motor unit recordings from human respiratory muscles that implicate the spinal cord as the site of integration of multiple descending neural drives to the motoneurones during respiratory and non-respiratory contractions. I established the ‘principle of motor unit recruitment by neuromechanical matching’, which is applicable to all movements we make and is relevant to the broader field of motor control.