Brock and Furness Labs ~ Staff Profiles
Assoc Professor James Brock
Phone: 8344 5797 (Office); 8344 5793 (Lab)
Rm: E641 (Office); E636 (Lab)
Email: jbrock@unimelb.edu.au
James Brock is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow. A major focus of his work is the effects of nerve injury on tissues innervated by the autonomic nervous system. In particular, his work has focussed on the effects of spinal cord injury and peripheral nerve injuries on blood vessel function. For example, he demonstrated for the first time that spinal cord injury produces a marked augmentation of neurovascular transmission; a change that almost certainly contributes to unusual high blood pressure episodes (autonomic dysreflexia) in spinal cord injured people. Currently he is investigating the effects of spinal cord injury on the epithelial lining (urothelium) of the urinary bladder. His work also focuses on sensory transduction in polymodal and cold-sensitive receptor nerve terminals of corneal sensory neurons, and he has developed electrophysiological techniques that, for the first time, have allowed direct investigation of action potential initiation in the naked nerve endings of C- and Ad-sensory neurones.