Dynamic Properties of Heart Fragments from Different Regions and Their Synchronization

The dynamic properties of the heart differ based on the regions that effectively circulate blood throughout the body with each heartbeat. These properties, including the inter-beat interval (IBI) of autonomous beat activity, are retained even in in vitro tissue fragments. However, details of beat dynamics have not been well analyzed, particularly at the sub-mm scale, although such dynamics of size are important for regenerative medicine and computational studies of the heart. We analyzed the beat dynamics in sub-mm tissue fragments from atria and ventricles of hearts obtained from chick embryos over a period of 40 h. The IBI and contraction speed differed by region and atrial fragments retained their values for a longer time. The major finding of this study is synchronization of these fragment pairs physically attached to each other. The probability of achieving this and the time required differ for regional pairs: atrium-atrium, ventricle-ventricle, or atrium-ventricle. Furthermore, the time required to achieve 1:1 synchronization does not depend on the proximity of initial IBI of paired fragments. Various interesting phenomena, such as 1:n synchronization and a reentrant-like beat sequence, are revealed during synchronization. Finally, our observation of fragment dynamics indicates that mechanical motion itself contributes to the synchronization of atria.