Muscle contraction RyRs are activated by a calcium trigger, which is brought about by the flow of through the L-type calcium channels. Furthermore, cardiac muscle tend to exhibit diad (or dyad) structures, rather than triads. Excitation-contraction coupling in cardiac muscle cells occurs when an action potential is initiated by pacemaker cells in the sinoatrial node or Atrioventricular node and conducted to all cells in the heart via gap junctions. The action potential travels along the surface membrane into T-tubules (the latter are not seen in all cardiac cell types) and the depolarisation causes extracellular to enter the cell via L-type calcium channels
Cardiac physiology rapid depolarization, followed by a plateau phase and then repolarization. This phenomenon accounts for the long refractory periods required for the cardiac muscle cells to pump blood effectively before they are capable of firing for a second time. These cardiac myocytes normally do not initiate their own electrical potential, although they are capable of doing so, but rather wait for an impulse to reach them. Contractile cells demonstrate a much more stable resting phase than conductive cells at approximately −80 mV for cells in the atria and −90 mV for cells in the ventricles. Despite this initial difference, the other