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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 heart did not pump blood around, the heart's motion sucked blood in during diastole and the blood moved by the pulsation of the arteries themselves. [93] Galen believed the arterial blood was created by venous blood passing from the left ventricle to the right through 'pores' between the ventricles. [ 90 ]
The action potential passes along the cell membrane causing the cell to contract, therefore the activity of the sinoatrial node results in a resting heart rate of roughly 60–100 beats per minute. All cardiac muscle cells are electrically linked to one another, by intercalated discs which allow the action potential to pass from one cell to the ...
Several types of cells support an action potential, such as plant cells, muscle cells, and the specialized cells of the heart (in which occurs the cardiac action potential). However, the main excitable cell is the neuron, which also has the simplest mechanism for the action potential. [citation needed]
Cells of the ventricles contract nearly simultaneously. The action potentials of cardiac muscle are unusually sustained. This prevents premature relaxation, maintaining initial contraction until the entire myocardium has had time to depolarize and contract. Absence of tetany. After contracting, the heart must relax to fill up again.
Mean blood pressure decreases as the circulating blood moves away from the heart through arteries and capillaries due to viscous losses of energy. Mean blood pressure drops over the whole circulation, although most of the fall occurs along the small arteries and arterioles . [ 35 ]
Purkinje fibers take up stain differently from the surrounding muscle cells because of having relatively fewer myofibrils than other cardiac cells. The presence of glycogen around the nucleus causes Purkinje fibers to appear, on a slide, lighter and larger than their neighbors, being arranged along the longitudinal direction (parallel to the ...
Blood vessels also circulate blood throughout the circulatory system. Oxygen (bound to hemoglobin in red blood cells) is the most critical nutrient carried by the blood. In all arteries apart from the pulmonary artery, hemoglobin is highly saturated (95–100%) with oxygen.