The heart is the engine of our circulatory system. These videos show the major anatomical structure of the mouse heart as well as the coronary arteries and the heart sympathetic nerve fibers in three-dimension.
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The movie starts with a surface that was created to demonstrate the sample structure. Then, the surface (left ventricle wall) becomes transparent, then disappears, and zooms to an innervated large coronary branch. MIP rendering.
First, we see the overview of the block (left ventricle, right ventricle, right atrium, aorta, a. pulmonaris). Then, the camera approaches the a. pulmonalis and shows the semilunar valves in high magnification (‘pockets’). Then, the SMA channel is switched on, and zooms to the initiation of the main coronary arteries that supply all the four main chambers. Blend rendering mode.
These are probably primarily cholinergic ganglia, according to the literature, but also express noradrenergic markers (i.e. TH here), so exhibit mixed neurochemical phenotype.
We see the surrounding coronary branches (red) and the ganglion cell bodies (bluish) that distribute like pearls or bunch of grapes. The axons form thick curly bundles, which then branch out and target mainly the atrial wall. Then zoom to some groups of ganglion cells and the MIP rendering mode switches to blend mode in order to better depict the shape of these small neurons.
