Patterns of electrical propagation in the intact pregnant guinea pig uterus

摘要

electrical activity in the pregnant myometrium is characterized by phasic bursts of action potentials (spikes), which could be based on cyclic changes in transmembrane potential (24). Cyclic changes in potential resemble in some respects slow waves in the intestines and presumably propagate through the myometrium, similar to the propagation of the intestinal slow waves. In both cases, the depolarization induced by the (slow) -waves initiate the opening of L-calcium channels leading to the occurrence of spikes. In the intestines, it is possible to record both slow waves and spikes with extracellular electrodes, and this made it possible to reconstruct the pattern of propagation of both signals and to study the complex interaction between these two electrical waveforms (22).