We know that medical research can sometimes seem a bit mysterious, so we hope that showing you what we do is helpful.
We hope that this page will give you a bit of an idea about the research we do in the Respiratory Muscle Laboratory at King’s College London (KCL), and to allow you to keep up to date with the projects we have running. We welcome any questions you might have about our work and we will do our best to answer them! Our department is based within the Respiratory Medicine building at King’s College Hos
Friday's Physiology Fact this week is thanks to the National Aquarium Denmark Den Blå Planet (as Vicky's on holiday in Copenhagen). This lovely zookeeper did a live squid dissection and explained how squid have three hearts and eleven brains - crazy. (Plus there are nice birds and fish to watch behind her.) Enjoy!
17/08/2018
Friday's Physiology Fact: the tiny but raucous coqui frog of Puerto Rico. The coqui has the loudest call of any amphibian, despite being super-tiny (34-40mm). The calls are so loud that the coquis should theoretically deafen themselves when they call, but they have adapted to overcome this. Rather than the sound wave reaching the eardrum only from the outside, the sound is transmitted to the inside of the eardrum as well via the lungs. This means that the vibrations of the eardrum are reduced overall by cancelling each other out and the frog gets to keep its hearing! 🐸 🔊
16/08/2018
for all those getting their today. We've already heard from some of our members who've got into - hooray!
to those who've got the results they want and need. To those who haven't - don't worry, it may be difficult now but you will take a different path to the one you expected, but it will work out. 🍀 🤞💪 😊 😔 🎉
10/08/2018
with
07/08/2018
Abbie from our student panel joined us yesterday for the annual revamp of the departmental display board. This is what she put together, with some (remote) help from fellow panel member Gilad. Thanks to them both for their hard work - it was great to hear from Abbie that she feels she has developed her creative skills through this task. Design is a key science skill with all the conference posters we have to do!
03/08/2018
Friday's Physiology Fact: in video format this week, as we share the amazing work of Student Panel members Leila, A'aishah and Manaal from Burntwood School who have made this fantastic video about how we test respiratory muscle strength in young children and babies. 👏 👏 👏 to the students for producing this almost entirely independently, showing an amazing understanding of the techniques and how difficult this testing can be for children and their parents.
This video will be used to support the ASPIRO gene therapy trial at the US National Institutes of Health, as well as in teaching at King's and elsewhere. We extend our thanks to the parents who kindly volunteered their children to be subjects in the video - we know it wasn't easy.
Infant respiratory muscle testing This video details the procedures used for testing respiratory muscle strength in infants and young children. The video was produced by Leila Bouali Lawrence...
27/07/2018
Friday's Physiology Fact: what has Juliette been up to these last few weeks? We didn't want to describe her project in detail as potential participants' results might have been affected by understanding the purpose of the study. Happily, Juliette has now finished recruiting subjects so we can do the big reveal!
We were interested in this study to find out if the type of distraction we give people during our respiratory measurements makes a difference to the data we collect. Juliette's psychology expertise was perfectly suited to this and so she has measured respiratory muscle activity alongside other respiratory parameters in a group of volunteers while they listen to music, watch calm or tense video clips, or do nothing at all.
Data analysis is ongoing, but we are grateful to student panel members Alison and Sophia for producing this lovely video all about the study. Thanks too to The Physiological Society for supporting Juliette's placement in the lab!
Juliette Westbrook's summer research project: where psychology & physiology meet Juliette Westbrook, former King's Muscle Lab student panel member and now studying Experimental Psychology at University of Oxford, was awarded a Physiologic...
26/07/2018
Couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous pair of girls to help us with making a video about respiratory muscle testing techniques to support and
Thanks too to for delicious "persuasion" ( ) cakes! @ King's Muscle Lab