BtBs seminar - The Non-Textbook Heart: Structure, Electrics, Mechanics

Peter Kohl , University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.

The heart is an amazing organ. It beats once per  second, about 1 million times every ten days, and if it stops – so does  life. The volume it pumps in a year is equivalent to that of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Pumping itself involves intra-cardiac volume redistribution between atria and ventricles, without a discernible change in the overall  external volume, occupied by the blood-filled heart. This mechanical activity results from electrically-orchestrated contractions of billions of individual heart muscle cells. Each of them displays slightly different stress-strain behaviour, depending on the local mechanical environment, which differs as a function for example of basico-apical, and transmural positions. The mechanical environment furthermore changes, in regionally differing ways, with any alteration in pre- (volume) or after- (pressure) load, such as on every breath we take, when we change posture, or during exercise. The matching of local mechanical activity to global demand requires finely tuned auto-regulatory abilities, and all that in the absence of the kind of neuro-muscular junctions that tune skeletal myofibre activity. In addition, the cross-talk between electrics and mechanics is far from uni-directional, as electrical excitation and conduction, as well as the mechanisms underlying electro-mechanical coupling, are exquisitely mechano-sensitive. Add to this the observation that the heart contains more non-myocytes than muscle cells, combined with recent insight into electrical coupling between those different cell populations, and it becomes clear that we need to take a fresh look at intriguing non-canonical aspects of cardiac structure and function that extend beyond current textbook knowledge.

Host: Rocchetti, Lodola

The seminar is OPEN to all.

ONLINE REGISTRATION for the seminar is a mandatory requirement for those who wish to request the CERTIFICATE OF ATTENDANCE, which, together with the signature on the ATTENDANCE SHEET, will confirm actual participation.

The seminar's online registration will be available a few days before the event.

for information: infobtbs@unimib.it

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