Cardiac pacemaker and eventual action potential in contractile cells. Having cardiomyocytes connected via gap junctions allow all contractile cells of the heart to act in a coordinated fashion and contract as a unit. All the while being in sync with the pacemaker cells; this is the property that allows the pacemaker cells to control contraction in all other cardiomyocytes. Cells in the SA node spontaneously depolarize, ultimately resulting in contraction, approximately 100 times per minute. This native rate is constantly modified by the activity of sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve fibers via the autonomic nervous system, so that the average resting cardiac rate
Cardiac neural crest cells of heart attacks include cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure. Although CNCCs are important in embryos, some CNCCs are retained in a dormant state to adulthood where they are called "neural crest stem cells". In 2005, Tomita transplanted neural crest stem cells from mammal hearts to the neural crest of chick embryos. These CNCCs were shown to migrate into the developing heart of the chick using the same dorsolateral pathway as the CNCCs, and differentiate into neural and glial cells. Tamura's study of 2011 examined the fate of CNCCs after a heart attack (myocardial infarction) in young mice. The CNCCs in