Your Heart’s Electrical System

The animation below shows how your heart's electrical system works. Click the "start" button to play the animation. Written and spoken explanations are provided with each frame of the animation. Use the buttons in the lower right corner to pause, restart, or replay the animation, or use the scroll bar below the buttons to move through the frames.

The animation shows how the heart's internal electrical conduction system causes the heart to pump blood.

Your heart’s electrical system controls all the events that occur when your heart pumps blood. The electrical system also is called the cardiac conduction system. If you’ve ever seen the heart test called an EKG (electrocardiogram), you’ve seen a graphical picture of the electrical activity of your heart.

Your heart’s electrical system is made up of three main parts:

• The sinoatrial (SA) node located in the right atrium of your heart
• The atrioventricular (AV) node located on the interatrial septum close to the tricuspid valve
• The His-Purkinje system located along the walls of your heart’s ventricles

A heartbeat is a complicated series of events that take place in your heart. A heartbeat is a single cycle in which your heart’s chambers relax and contract to pump blood. This cycle includes the opening and closing of the two inlet and outlet valves of the right and left ventricles of your heart.

Each heartbeat has two basic parts: diastole, and atrial and ventricular systole. During diastole, the atria and ventricles of your heart relax and begin to fill with blood. At the end of diastole, your heart’s atria contract (atrial systole), pumping blood into the ventricles, and then begin to relax. Your heart’s ventricles then contract (ventricular systole), pumping blood out of your heart.

Each beat of your heart is set in motion by an electrical signal from within your heart muscle. In a normal, healthy heart, each beat begins with a signal from the SA node. This is why the SA node is sometimes called your heart’s natural pacemaker. Your pulse, or heart rate, is the number of signals the SA node produces per minute.

The signal is generated as the two vena cavae fill your heart’s right atrium with blood from other parts of your body. The signal spreads across the cells of your heart’s right and left atria. This signal causes the atria to contract. This action pushes blood through the open valves from the atria into both ventricles.

The signal arrives at the AV node near the ventricles (see red burst on picture), where it slows for an instant to allow your heart’s right and left ventricles to fill with blood. The signal is released and moves to the His bundle located in the walls of your heart’s ventricles.

From the His bundle, the signal fibers divide into left and right bundle branches through the Purkinje fibers that connect directly to the cells in the walls of your heart’s left and right ventricles (see yellow on the picture). As the signal spreads across the cells of your heart’s ventricle walls, both ventricles contract, but not at exactly the same moment. The left ventricle contracts an instant before the right ventricle. This pushes blood through the pulmonary valve (for the right ventricle) to your lungs, and through the aortic valve (for the left ventricle) to the rest of your body.

As the signal passes, the walls of the ventricles relax and await the next signal.

This process continues over and over as the atria refill with blood and other electrical signals come from the SA node.