Unidirectional block between isolated rabbit ventricular cells coupled by a variable resistance.

We have used pairs of electrically coupled cardiac cells to investigate the dependence of successful conduction of an action potential on three components of the conduction process: (a) the amount of depolarization required to be produced in the nonstimulated cell (the "sink" for current flow) to initiate an action potential in the nonstimulated cell, (b) the intercellular resistance as the path for intercellular current flow, and (c) the ability of the stimulated cell to maintain a high membrane potential to serve as the "source" of current during the conduction process. We present data from eight pairs of simultaneously recorded rabbit ventricular cells, with the two cells of each pair physically separated from each other. We used an electronic circuit to pass currents into and out of each cell such that these currents produced the effects of any desired level of intercellular resistance. The cells of equal size (as assessed by their current threshold and their input resistance for small depolarizations) show bidirectional failure of conduction at very high values of intercellular resistance which then converts to successful bidirectional conduction at lower values of intercellular resistance. For cell pairs with asymmetrical cell sizes, there is a large range of values of intercellular resistance over which unidirectional block occurs with conduction successful from the larger cell to the smaller cell but with conduction block from the smaller cell to the larger cell. We then further show that one important component which limits the conduction process is the large early repolarization which occurs in the stimulated cell during the process of conduction, a process that we term "source loading."