Morphology, distribution, and variability of the epicardiac neural ganglionated subplexuses in the human heart
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Concomitant with the development of surgical treatment of cardiac arrythmias and management of myocardial ischemia, there is renewed interest in morphology of the intrinsic cardiac nervous system. In this study, we analyze the topography and structure of the human epicardiac neural plexus (ENP) as a system of seven ganglionated subplexuses. The morphology of the ENP was revealed by a histochemical method for acetylcholinesterase in whole hearts of 21 humans and examined by stereoscopic, contact, and bright-field microscopy. According to criteria established to distinguish ganglionated subplexuses, they are epicardiac extensions of mediastinal nerves entering the heart through discrete sites of the heart hilum and proceeding separately into regions of innervation by seven pathways, on the courses of which epicardiac ganglia, as wide ganglionated fields, are plentifully located. It was established that topography of epicardiac subplexuses was consistent from heart to heart. In general, the human right atrium was innervated by two subplexuses, the left atrium by three, the right ventricle by one, and the left ventricle by three subplexuses. The highest density of epicardiac ganglia was identified near the heart hilum, especially on the dorsal and dorsolateral surfaces of the left atrium, where up to 50% of all cardiac ganglia were located. The number of epicardiac ganglia identified for the human hearts in this study ranged from 706 up to 1,560 and was not correlated with age in most heart regions. The human heart contained on average 836 +/- 76 epicardiac ganglia. The structural organization of ganglia and nerves within subplexuses was observed to vary considerably from heart to heart and in relation to age. The number of neurons identified for any epicardiac ganglion was significantly fewer in aged human compared with infants. By estimating the number of neurons within epicardiac ganglia and relating this to the number of ganglia in the human epicardium, it was calculated that approximately 43,000 intrinsic neurons might be present in the ENP in adult hearts and 94,000 neurons in young hearts (fetuses, neonates, and children). In conclusion, this study demonstrates the total ENP in humans using staining for acetylcholinesterase, and provides a morphological framework for an understanding of how intrinsic ganglia and nerves are structurally organized within the human heart.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".