Figure 1
Block diagram of circuit used for the 10 × 10 model of 100 cardiac muscle cells bathed in Ringer solution. There were 10 parallel chains (A through J), each containing 10 cells (cells 1 through 10). Electrical stimulation (0.25 nA, 0.5 ms rectangular current pulses) was applied to the inside of the first cell of the first chain (cell #A1). The AP propagated from the stimulated cell #A1 through the entire network. A variable shunt resistance (Rgj) was inserted across each of the nine longitudinal cell junctions of each chain to reflect various numbers of gap-junction channels (0, 10, 100 and 1,000). This is depicted only for the A-chain (to enhance clarity of the figure). The radial resistance of the very narrow junctional cleft (Rjc) is depicted. Each cardiac cell is depicted by four basic units: two for the surface membrane (one upward-facing and one downward-facing) and one for each of the two end junctional membranes. This is more clearly illustrated in Figure 2. To reduce complexity, the transmembrane voltage (Vm) was recorded from only the upward-facing surface membrane. The data illustrated in Figures 3 and 4 are records from only cells # 1, 5 and 10.