Neurocardiac interactions in the human heart: defining heart highways

Cross-Talk of Cells in the Heart 2025 (University of Birmingham, UK) (2025) Proc Physiol Soc 66, SA05

Research Symposium: Neurocardiac interactions in the human heart: defining heart highways

Cristina E. Molina1

1University Medical Center Hamburg –Eppendorf & University of Oxford Germany/UK

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Over the past decades significant progress has been made in understanding heart function, particularly in the context of excitation-contraction coupling and cardiac electrophysiology. These insights have provided a clear picture of the major pathophysiological mechanisms underlying cardiac diseases, including neurohormonal regulation of heart function. Nevertheless, understanding neurogenic mechanisms and the influence of neuronal remodelling on cardiac diseases onset and progression has been representing a challenging experimental problem. It is clear that cardiac autonomic alterations are extremely important in the pathogenesis of many cardiovascular diseases. This highlight the relevance of single-cell and cell-cell interaction studies to comprehensively delineate both individual cardiomyocyte and cardiac neuron function, as the crosstalk between the two of them. However, there is a profound gap of knowledge regarding the characterization of the neurons in the heart, in our understanding of this crosstalk and in how or whether cardiovascular targeted therapies impact on the activity of the neurons. We explore neurocardiac interactions using for the first time human cardiac myocytes and neurons.



Where applicable, experiments conform with Society ethical requirements.

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