ABSTRACT
The complex adaptive behavior of global-level structures that emerges is a consequence of nonlinear spatio-temporal interactions of local-level processes or subsystems. The concept of 'self-regulation' is based on the axiom that the heart is a regulatory system, integrating many internal and external functional units, including encfothelium-mediaed control and afferent/efferent neural mechanisms and thereby generating feedback of its beat-to-beat performance as a muscular pump. Cardiac self-regulation is vital for coping with myocardial ischemia, a dynamic process associated with both destructive and protective cellular response mechanism. It is important to recognize that cellular adaptation cannot be viewed simply in terms of biochemical events and/or processes. The capacity of self-organized systems to adapt is emboded in the functional organization of intrinsic control mechanisms. The denervated heart offers a unique experimental model to study the reassembly of the mechanisms responsible for a complex heart rate dynamics.
