**Meet the editor**

Dr Saeed Oraii received his MD from the Teheran University of Medical Sciences in 1987. He also received a board certification in Cardiology from the Iran University of Medical Sciences in 1995, and in Electrophysiology from the Pacemaker and Electrophysiology Board, Iranian Heart Association in 2001. He is a member of the Iranian Heart Association, Iranian Atherosclerosis Soci-

ety, and the Heart Rhythm Society. Dr Oraii currently works at the Tehran Arrhythmia Center.

Contents

**Preface IX** 

Luis A. Gurovich

Chapter 2 **Pacemaker Currents** 

Avital Schurr

Chapter 4 **Evoked Potentials 83**  Ahmet Akay

Morteza Movassat

Chapter 6 **Right Ventricular Pacing** 

Chapter 7 **Noninvasive Imaging** 

Chapter 5 **Diagnostic Values** 

Chapter 1 **Electrophysiology of Woody Plants 1** 

**in Dopaminergic Neurones of the Mice Olfactory Bulb 25** 

Angela Pignatelli, Cristina Gambardella, Mirta Borin,

**in the Study of Brain Energy Metabolism 51** 

**of Electrophysiology in Ophthalmology 109** 

**and Mechanical Dyssynchrony 135**  Kevin V. Burns, Ryan M. Gage and Alan J. Bank

Chapter 8 **Past, Present and Future Catheter Technologies** 

**of Cardiac Electrophysiology (NICE) 157**  Michael Seger, Bernhard Pfeifer and Thomas Berger

**and Energy Sources for Atrial Fibrillation Ablation 187**  Inderpal Singh, Adam Price, Zachary Leshen and Boaz Avitall

Alex Fogli Iseppe and Ottorino Belluzzi

Chapter 3 **Hippocampal Slices and Their Electrophysiogy** 

## Contents

#### **Preface XI**


## Preface

Enormous progress has been made in the science of Electrophysiology over the last two centuries or more. William Gilbert, the physician of Queen Elizabeth I, first introduced the term "electrica" in the year 1600, for objects that hold static electricity. He derived it from the Greek word for amber (electra). The introduction of "bioelectricity" however, dates back to the works of Luigi Galvani in 1787, and his observations that a frog nerve‐muscle preparation could be contracted by delivering electrical impulses.

From 1825, the development of sensitive galvanometers by Leopoldo Nobili made it possible to record charges and currents within the animal cells. Further investigations into the nature of "animal electricity" led to the demonstration of the resting heart muscle electrical currents by Carlo Matteucci in 1838, and this can truly be considered as the birth of cardiac electrophysiology.

In 1877, Augustus Desiree Waller was the first to record electric potentials associated with the beating heart from the body surface: the first human electrocardiogram. This was made possible by the invention of a capillary electrometer by Thomas Goswell, a technician in his laboratory.

During subsequent years, the outstanding evolution of recording techniques paved the way for better understanding of electrophysiological phenomena within the human organs, including the cardiovascular, ophthalmologic and neural systems. In the field of cardiac electrophysiology, the development of more and more sophisticated recording and mapping techniques made it possible to elucidate the mechanism of various cardiac arrhythmias. This has even led to the evolution of techniques to ablate and cure most complex cardiac arrhythmias. Nevertheless, there is still a long way ahead and this book can be considered a valuable addition to the current knowledge in subjects related to bioelectricity from plants to the human heart.

**Saeed Oraii**

Cardiologist, Interventional Electrophysiologist, Cardiology Department ‐ Shahid Rajaii Heart Hospital, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

**1** 

*Chile* 

Luis A. Gurovich

*Universidad Católica de Chile* 

**Electrophysiology of Woody Plants** 

A fundamental property of all living organisms is related to the continuous gathering of environmental information and the expression of physiological responses aimed to optimize its performance under new environmental conditions. In order to keep homeostasis, plants need to continuously gather information about its environment and to react physiologically, in order to synchronize its normal biological functions. Plant cells become bio electrochemically excited under the influence of environmental changes and the conduction of these electric potential modifications to distant plant organs have been widely reported. Electrochemical phenomena in plants have attracted researchers since the eighteenth century (Bertholon, 1783; Burdon-Sanderson, 1873; Darwin, 1875; Lemström, 1904; Bose, 1926); however, only in the last decade numerous papers related to plant electrophysiology have been published (for a comprehensive review on the subject see Volkov´s book *"Plant Electrophysiology, Theory and Methods"*, 2006). Detection of electrical potentials in plants indicates that electrical signaling is a major system to transmit information over long distances throughout its organs. The reason why plants have developed pathways for electrical signal transmission is probably related to its need to respond rapidly to environmental stress factors (Fromm & Lautner, 2007). Electrophysiological studies of longdistance signals in plants and animals contribute to our knowledge of the living world by revealing important similarities and crucial differences between plants and animals, in an area that might be directly related to their different capacities to respond to environmental

The existence of electrophysiological mechanisms for information perception, transmission and processing between different plant organs and tissues, allowing the expression of fast and accurate physiological reactions to specific biotic or abiotic stimuli, is expressed by means of real-time detectable *action* (APs) and *variation* (VPs) potentials (Datta & Palit, 2004; Gil et al., 2008; Lautner et al., 2005; Oyarce & Gurovich, 2010; Volkov et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2009). An additional type of electric potential in plants has been proposed by Zimmermann et al. (2009), to be called *system* potential. In addition to APs that occur also in animals and lower plants (Trebacz et al., 2005) higher plants feature an additional, unique, hydraulically propagated type of electric signals VPs, called also *slow wave potentials*

Several models have been proposed to explain the onset of plant cell electric excitation, resulting from external stimuli (Wayne, 1993; Fromm & Lautner, 2007). All plant cells are

**1. Introduction** 

change.

(Stahlberg et al., 2005).
