A manuscript of the human heart drawn by Leonardo da Vinci. (Public domain)
More than 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci, the famous painter, drew the delicate and complex structures of the omentum inside the human heart. Now, scientists finally understand how some of these structures work.
Scientists have seen through dissection that the inner wall of the human heart has a complex meshwork of muscle fibers. One of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings shows such a structure, which looks mysterious and sensual with its intricate, snow-white, cotton-thin muscle fibers.
It was previously known only that this is a structure that has been formed in the human embryo at the early stages of development, helping to provide better oxygen to the heart during its development. As for what else this structure does in the human body as an adult is not known.
A study published in the journal Nature on August 19, 2020, finally shed more light on the use of this structure by analyzing 25,000 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of the heart and using Fractal Theory, which has been rapidly developing in recent years.
Fractal theory is an emerging branch of nonlinear scientific research. Fascinating fractal forms can be found everywhere in nature, in the form of tree roots, tree crowns, cauliflowers, and in the structure of the cerebral cortex. This theory has been applied in all areas of society, from central to local progressively fine-grained management, to the Internet, Google Maps, etc., where information technology is spread all over the world. The inner membrane of the human heart also has such a fractal network.
Da Vinci speculated at the Time that this snowflake-like pattern of omentum helped keep blood warm as it flowed through the heart.
This new study found that the rough inner lining of the heart helps blood flow more smoothly through the heart. Just like “the small grooves on the surface of a golf ball can reduce air resistance,” the study’s press release said.
The researchers also found that different fractal patterns influenced the risk of heart failure, for example, people with more complex myofiber branching patterns had a lower risk of heart failure.
Researcher Hannah Meyer said, “It was only by combining genetics, clinical studies, and bioengineering that we learned that the adult myocardial fiber network turned out to have some of these previously unknown functions.”
The researchers say there are more complex roles for the myocardial fiber network, and the current study is only a first step.
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