What Makes Our Heart Beat? (It's Not Your Brain)

A car needs gas to run. A light needs electricity. But what makes your heart beat? You never told it to start, and you can't tell it to stop. When someone gets a new heart, the nerves that linked it to the brain are cut, and it beats anyway. A calm look at where every heartbeat really starts: a small strip of cells that lights its own spark, about once a second, for your whole life. How a single cell starts itself (a bit like a Japanese bamboo fountain), how the spark spreads through the heart in the right order, what makes the "lub" and the "dub", what the brain is left to do, and what your heart really needs. Subscribe for more about the body:    / @anatomyatlas3d   Chapters 0:00 What does your heart need? 0:52 Does the brain make it beat? 1:45 What is a heartbeat? 2:47 Where does the spark start? 3:42 How does a cell start itself? 5:03 How does the spark spread? 6:25 What makes the sound? 7:28 Who sets the pace? 9:17 So what does your heart need? A note on your own heart This video is general information, not medical advice. A heartbeat you can feel (palpitations) is usually harmless. See a doctor if it keeps coming back or lasts more than a few minutes; call your emergency number if it comes with chest pain, shortness of breath, or feeling faint. Main sources How the heart beats (NIH, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/hear... Heart conduction system (Cleveland Clinic) https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health... Cardiac muscle and electrical activity (OpenStax Anatomy and Physiology) https://openstax.org/books/anatomy-an... Sinoatrial node action potentials (CV Physiology, Klabunde) https://cvphysiology.com/arrhythmias/... The transplanted heart's nerves (Awad et al. 2016, Journal of the American Heart Association) https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.11... Why a transplanted heart beats faster (Haberbusch et al. 2020, Frontiers in Physiology) https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/... Galen and the heart's own beat (Physiology News) https://www.physoc.org/magazine-artic... The history of the isolated beating heart, Langendorff (Archives of Medical Science) https://amsad.termedia.pl/History-of-... Einthoven and the electrocardiogram (NobelPrize.org) https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/med... Keith, Flack and the sinoatrial node, 1906 (Silverman & Hollman 2007, Heart) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... The funny current, found in 1979 (Brown, DiFrancesco & Noble, Nature) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/450140/ Two heart cells in a dish beat as one (Rook et al. 1990, Journal of Membrane Biology) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2266548 The AV node's delay (StatPearls, Physiology, AV Junction) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NB... The heart sounds (StatPearls, Physiology, Heart Sounds) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NB... Laennec and the first stethoscope (Roguin 2006, Clinical Medicine & Research) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... Two hearts in one chest (Yusuf, Mitchell & Yacoub 1985, British Heart Journal) https://heart.bmj.com/content/54/2/173 The first implanted pacemaker and Arne Larsson (IEEE Spectrum) https://spectrum.ieee.org/rune-elmqvist The heart's first beats (OpenStax Anatomy and Physiology, development of the heart) https://openstax.org/books/anatomy-an... Checking your pulse (British Heart Foundation) https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsup... Heart palpitations (NHS) https://www.nhs.uk/symptoms/heart-pal...