Cardiac pacemaker Cardiac pacemaker The contraction of cardiac muscle (heart muscle) in all animals is initiated by electrical impulses known as action potentials. The rate at which these impulses fire controls the rate of cardiac contraction, that is, the heart rate. The cells that create these rhythmic impulses, setting the pace for blood pumping, are called pacemaker cells, and they directly control the heart rate. They make up the cardiac pacemaker, that is, the natural pacemaker of the heart. In most humans, the concentration of pacemaker cells in the sinoatrial (SA) node is the natural pacemaker, and the resultant rhythm is a
Cardiac neural crest cells the young mice were tagged with enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) and then traced. Tagged CNCCs were concentrated in the cardiac outflow tract, and some were found in the ventricular myocardium. These cells were also shown to be differentiating into cardiomyocytes as the heart grew. Although less were found, these EGFP-labelled CNCCs were still present in the adult heart. When a heart attack was induced, the CNCCs aggregated in the ischemic border zone area (an area of damaged tissue that can still be saved) and helped contribute to the regeneration of the tissue to some extent via differentiation into cardiomyocytes