Caltech scientists show function of helical band in heart

Scientists from the California Institute of Technology have created images of the heart's muscular layer that show, for the first time, the connection between the configuration of those muscles and the way the human heart contracts. More precisely, they showed that the muscular band - which wraps around the inner chambers of the heart in a helix - is actually a sort of twisting highway along which each contraction of the heart travels. Their findings were published in the December issue of the American Physiological Society journal, Heart and Circulatory Physiology.