Electrical conduction system of the heart

[fiveworlds]

What influence does temperature have on the electrical conduction system of the heart?

[John Cuthber]

If my heart isn't pretty close to 37C I'm not going to be worrying about its electrical properties much.

Why do you ask?

[fiveworlds]

I was curious. I was studying the anatomy and physiology of the heart recently and temperature affecting the conductivity of the electrical circuit wasn't included so I asked and was told that they didn't understand the question then they said it didn't have any effect. However I know a small amount of physics I learned years ago and I would question this because generally temperature has an effect on the resistivity of circuits however I didn't know if I could logically apply what works for copper wire to the heart conduction system. The human heart consists of an electrical pacemaker

 

 

According to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1350689/in sheep

 

Cooling of Purkinje fibres from 37° C to room temperature (25° C) slowed the time course of the current and decreased its peak amplitude.

 

But I can't find any references to such studies on human heart conductivity.

[GPS]

Changes in an electrocardiogram (mV-amplitude per ms-time) occur during cases such as hypothermia. It's not a peer reviewed journal but it seems to be a fairly decent (no garantees) web-site that could be used as a starting point to modify your search terms, etc. http://www.equimedcorp.com/rhythms/topic/29/

Edited May 29, 2015 by GPS