Right and left ventricles separated by → Interventricular septa

Conduction of the heart

The electrical activity that causes the heart to depolarise and
contract is generated in the sinoatrial (SA) node
The SA node is located in → the right atria
Consists of → A group of cells called pacemaker cells that have
no resting membrane potential and will spontaneously depolarise
Steps ↓ 1
1. Pacemaker cells in the SA node depolarise and fire action
potentials
2. The electrical activity of the action potentials travel throughout
the right and left atria via internodal pathways, carrying the
wave of depolarisation and causing both atria to contract with
the wave
A. Associated with the P wave on ECG
3. The depolarising wave reaches the AV node, located between
the right atria and ventricle, and slows down for a moment to
allow the ventricles to fill
A. Associated with the straight line between the P and Q wave
on ECG
4. From the AV node, the wave travels through the AV
bundle/Bundle of His, which splits into the left and right
branches and go through the interventricular septum
A. Associated with the Q wave on ECG
5. The wave then goes through the Purjinke fibres, which originate
at the bottom/apex of the heart and go upwards to the
contractile muscle and the ventricles contract from bottom to
top, the left an instant before the right, and allows the blood to
go all the way from the left ventricle up into the aorta or the
right ventricle up into the pulmonary artery
A. Associated with the R wave (left ventricle contraction) and S
wave (right ventricle contraction) on ECG
6. The ventricle relax and wait for the next signal ?
A. Associated with the T wave on ECG
 Cells in the heart are electrically coupled via gap junctions
Cells are held together via desmosomes, which help in → resisting
stretching of the heart
Why is stretching bad? → Excessive heart stretch causes it to
grow, called cardiac hypertrophy, making it difficult to properly
contract
During the Steps, the conduction is very rapid up until it reaches the
AV node, where is slows down
What causes the slow down at the AV node? → The pacemaker
cells at the SA node are large, so there's little resistance, but at
the AV node the cells are smaller and therefore there's more
resistance
How is this biologically relevant? → The slowing down of
conduction allows the atria to finish contracting before the
ventricles begin to contract (realistically though, the atria only
needs to push 10% of its blood to the ventricle - 90% of it goes
through passively at rest)
The SA node is the fastest and AV node is 2nd fastest, so if
SA node were to fail the AV node can take over, and if the AV
node fails, then other parts of the heart can take over
When parts of the heart other than the SA node are acting
as the pacemaker, the condition is called ectopic
pacemaker
Artificial pacemakers have 2 leads → 1 to the right atria (to
stimulate the SA node) and another to the apex of the heart
(to stimulate the muscle mass that is the ventricles)
None of the conduction cells in the heart have a resting
membrane potential - only the contractile muscle cells have a
resting membrane potential
Pacemaker potential
There are 2 action potentials in the heart ↓
Action potentials in the pacemaker cells
Pacemaker cells have no flat resting potential - it's always
either depolarising or repolarising. Instead, it has pacemaker
potential
?