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The Human Heart : The Embryology Of The Heart

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The human heart is a myogenic muscle which is vital to human life, as it is the muscle which deals with the pumping of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood throughout the entire body. Due to the importance of the heart an understanding of this complex muscle is necessary. Therefore, today I hope to discuss the embryology of the heart.
The formation of the heart begins during the third week of development, the embryo undergoes gastrulation in the embryonic plate resulting in the formation of three germ layers (ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm). Originally the embryonic plate possesses two germ layers (ectoderm & mesoderm) until pregenital heart cells from the ectoderm migrate through the primitive streak in to splanchnic mesoderm forming the third germ layer (endoderm) creating the primary heart field a region responsible for the formation of the left ventricle, atria and a part of the right ventricle.
Consequently, the heart is derived from the splanchnic mesoderm layer where it spreads laterally and cranially. Cells predestined to create the heart form a crescent at the cranial border of the disc, transforming the ectoderm into a neural plate and eventually into a neural tube due to continuous folding. The development of the heart is relative to the development of the brain because as the cranial end of the neural tubes grow they derive the folding of the disc resulting in a tube.
Due to continuous folding the position of the cardiac plate inverts eventually folding in to a

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