Heart fields: spatial polarity and temporal dynamics
Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 3, 2026

Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention
Published on: November 16, 2017
1Department of Natural Sciences, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Michigan.
Abstract:
In chick and mouse, heart fields undergo dynamic morphological spatiotemporal changes during heart tube formation. Here, the dynamic change in spatial polarity of such fields is discussed and a new perspective on the heart fields is proposed. The heart progenitor cells delaminate through the primitive streak and migrate in a semicircular trajectory craniolaterally forming the bilateral heart fields as part of the splanchnic mesoderm. They switch their polarity from anteroposterior to mediolateral. The anterior intestinal portal posterior descent inverts the newly formed heart field mediolateral polarity into lateromedial by 125° bending. The heart fields revert back to their original anteroposterior polarity and fuse at the midline forming a semi heart tube by completing their half circle movement. Several names and roles were assigned to different portions of the heart fields: posterior versus anterior, first versus second, and primary versus secondary heart field. The posterior and anterior heart fields define basically physical fields that form the inflow-outflow axis of the heart tube. The first and second heart fields are, in contrast, temporal fields of differentiating cardiomyocytes expressing myosin light chain 2a and undifferentiated and proliferating precardiac mesoderm expressing Isl1 gene, respectively. The two markers present a complementary pattern and are expressed transiently in all myocardial lineages. Thus, Isl1 is not restricted to a portion of the heart field or one of the two heart lineages as has been often assumed.
Related Concept Videos
Magnetic Fields
A magnetic field is defined by the force that a charged particle experiences...
Electromagnetic Fields
However, the observation of...
Magnetic Field Lines
Magnetic field lines follow several hard-and-fast rules:
Electric Field of Two Equal and Opposite Charges
A separation of the positive and negative charges can lead to a weak, remnant effect of the positive and negative charges. The expectation is that the more the distance between the positive and...
Electric Field Lines
The solution to this problem is to use electric field lines, which are not vectors but...
Electrophysiology of Normal Cardiac Rhythm

