[Characteristics of myocardial cholinergic innervation and its species differences]

By means of some neuromorphological and physiological methods, peculiarities of the cardiac cholinergic innervation have been studied in the rabbit, guinea pig, cat, rat and man. The mammalian myocardium (the man including) is heterogeneous in its parasympathetic innervation. There are no terminal cholinergic plexuses in the external and medial layers of the myocardial ventricles, their density is not the same in other myocardial area. According to the cholinergic plexus density gradient, various parts of the atrial myocardium are distributed as following: the anterior part of the atrioventricular node and the atrioventricular fasciculus, the sinuatrial node area, the atrial septum, the right and left atria. Heterogeneity mentioned for the terminal cholinergic plexus demonstrates that various myocardial parts are not similarly subjected to the cholinergic influences.