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Cardiac muscle is made of special myocytes that each beat on their own. They do not need nerve stimulation like your leg or arm muscles do. This is called self pacing. If you would place several muscle cells in a dish with normal saline fluid, then each would contract. If one touched the other, one would cause the other to contract with it. This is called pacing. If more and more would touch, more would contract together. The heart has two areas which are called pacemakers. This keeps the muscle cells beating together. One causes the heart to beat at a faster rate. If this should fail, the second one will take over as a back up. But it beats at a slower rate.

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10y ago

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