Thoracic Key

The Working Heart More than a century ago, Woods (1892) related the different shapes of the right and left ventricles (see Chapter 1) to the law of Laplace. Using measurements…

Cardiac Ion Channels Cardiac myocytes are activated by an electrical signal, the action potential, in which changes in electrical potential across the plasma membrane (Em) result from an elaborate sequence…

The Heart as a Muscular Pump Unlike the contraction of a skeletal muscle, which is characterized by changes in tension and length, the beating heart generates pressure and ejects a…

Regulation of Cardiac Muscle Performance Regulatory Mechanisms in Cardiac and Skeletal Muscle Muscle performance can be regulated by the four mechanisms listed in Table 10-1. To meet different physiological and…

Signal Transduction: Proliferative Signaling The signaling systems that regulate cell size, shape, and composition play an important role in the pathophysiology of cardiac disease. These systems, along with those that…

Signal Transduction: Functional Signaling The vie constante, where life manifests itself independently of the external environment [is] characterized by freedom and independence … Here life is never suspended, but flows…

Excitation-Contraction Coupling: Extracellular and Intracellular Calcium Cycles It is quite … impossible to explain the rapid development of full activity in a [skeletal muscle] twitch by assuming that it is…

Active State, Length-Tension Relationship, and Cardiac Mechanics T ension development and shortening by the heart depend on interactions between the contractile proteins (Chapter 4) and their interplay with the cytoskeleton…

The Contractile Proteins Cardiac contraction and relaxation depend on interactions among the six proteins listed in Table 4-1. This chapter describes each of these proteins, how they interact as actomyosins…

The Cytoskeleton Come to me now, you muses who live on Olympus for you are goddesses, are everywhere and know all things, while we only hear of glory but do…