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The heart is a muscular organ found in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. [1] The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide to the lungs. [2] In humans, the heart is approximately the size of a closed fist and is located ...
Cardiac muscle. Cardiac muscle (also called heart muscle or myocardium) is one of three types of vertebrate muscle tissues, the others being skeletal muscle and smooth muscle. It is an involuntary, striated muscle that constitutes the main tissue of the wall of the heart. The cardiac muscle (myocardium) forms a thick middle layer between the ...
The heart is a muscular organ situated in the mediastinum.It consists of four chambers, four valves, two main arteries (the coronary arteries), and the conduction system. The left and right sides of the heart have different functions: the right side receives de-oxygenated blood through the superior and inferior venae cavae and pumps blood to the lungs through the pulmonary artery, and the left ...
Cardiac physiology. Cardiac physiology or heart function is the study of healthy, unimpaired function of the heart: involving blood flow; myocardium structure; the electrical conduction system of the heart; the cardiac cycle and cardiac output and how these interact and depend on one another.
The cells that make up the SA node are specialized cardiomyocytes known as pacemaker cells that can spontaneously generate cardiac action potentials. These signals are propagated through the heart's electrical conduction system. [1][2] Only one percent of the heart muscle cells are conductive, the rest of the cardiomyocytes are contractile.
Rate dependence of the action potential is a fundamental property of cardiac cells and alterations can lead to severe cardiac diseases including cardiac arrhythmia and sometimes sudden death. [3] Action potential activity within the heart can be recorded to produce an electrocardiogram (ECG). This is a series of upward and downward spikes ...
In a healthy heart all activities and rests during each individual cardiac cycle, or heartbeat, are initiated and orchestrated by signals of the heart's electrical conduction system, which is the "wiring" of the heart that carries electrical impulses throughout the body of cardiomyocytes, the specialized muscle cells of the heart.
The heart derives from embryonic mesodermal germ layer cells that differentiate after gastrulation into mesothelium, endothelium, and myocardium.Heart induction occurs in the anterior mesoderm during gastrulation through interactions with adjacent endoderm (both extra-embryonic and definitive) mediated primarily by endogenous inhibitors of WNT signaling such as DKK1.