heart

The heart is a muscular organ found in humans and other animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels. The heart and blood vessels together make up the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the tissue, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide to the lungs. In humans, the heart is approximately the size of a closed fist and is located between the lungs, in the middle compartment of the chest, called the mediastinum.

OverviewAI-generated

The heart is an organ within the circulatory system, found in the taxon Animalia. It is located in the cavity of the bony thorax and connects with arteries and veins. The structure includes cardiac chambers and the myocardium. It is supplied by the right and left coronary arteries and drained by the superior vena cava. The organ is innervated by the cardiac plexus.

Its primary function is blood circulation, during which it produces heart sounds. The subject is studied by cardiology and is described by sources such as the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary and the Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition. It is referenced by 2,940 other encyclopedia articles. The Unicode character 🫀 represents the heart.

Synthesized by Vinony from 25 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, PubMed, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Key facts

Anatomy.Name: Heart
Anatomy.Latin: cor
Anatomy.Greek: καρδία (kardía)
Anatomy.Image2: 150px
Anatomy.Caption2: An illustration of the anterior view of the human heart
Anatomy.System: Circulatory
Anatomy.Artery: Aorta, pulmonary trunk and right and left pulmonary arteries, right coronary artery, left main coronary artery
Anatomy.Vein: Superior vena cava, inferior vena cava, right and left pulmonary veins, great cardiac vein, middle cardiac vein, small cardiac vein, anterior cardiac veins
Anatomy.Nerve: Accelerans nerve, vagus nerve

via Wikipedia infobox

Research

1,989,742 papers

Regeneration of the heart.ReviewEMBO molecular medicine · 2011Steinhauser ML, Lee RTDOI: 10.1002/emmm.201100175
Mechanism of heart failure after myocardial infarction.ReviewThe Journal of international medical research · 2023Jiang H, Fang T, Cheng ZDOI: 10.1177/03000605231202573
Metabolic Flexibility of the Heart: The Role of Fatty Acid Metabolism in Health, Heart Failure, and Cardiometabolic Diseases.ReviewInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2024Actis Dato V, Lange S, Cho YDOI: 10.3390/ijms25021211
Harnessing the Heart's Magnetic Field for Advanced Diagnostic Techniques.ReviewSensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Elfouly T, Alouani ADOI: 10.3390/s24186017
Glia of the heart's nervous system.ReviewNature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Scherschel K, Wolf H, Ajijola OA et al.DOI: 10.1038/s41583-025-00974-7
Wnt signaling in cardiac development and heart diseases.ReviewIn vitro cellular & developmental biology. Animal · 2024Horitani K, Shiojima IDOI: 10.1007/s11626-024-00917-z
The heart's content-renewable resources.ReviewInternational journal of cardiology · 2013Faucherre A, Jopling CDOI: 10.1016/j.ijcard.2012.09.051
Heart-on-a-chip: a revolutionary organ-on-chip platform for cardiovascular disease modeling.ReviewJournal of translational medicine · 2025Liu B, Wang S, Ma H et al.DOI: 10.1186/s12967-024-05986-y

via PubMed

~82 min read

Encyclopedic overview

50 sections

Contents

Structure
Location and shape
Chambers
Valves
Right heart
Left heart
Wall
Pericardium
Coronary circulation
Nerve supply
Development
Physiology
Blood flow
Cardiac cycle
Cardiac output
Electrical conduction
Heart rate
Influences
Clinical significance
Diseases
Channelopathies
Diagnosis
Examination
Heart sounds
Blood tests
Electrocardiogram
Imaging
Treatment
Ischemic heart disease
Valvular heart disease
Cardiac arrhythmias
Heart failure
History
Ancient
Pre-modern
Modern
Society and culture
Symbolism
Cuisine
Other animals
Vertebrates
Double circulatory systems
Full division
Fish
Invertebrates
Additional images
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links

In humans, the heart is divided into four chambers: upper left and right atria and lower left and right ventricles. Commonly, the right atrium and ventricle are referred together as the right heart and their left counterparts as the left heart. In a healthy heart, blood flows one way through the heart due to heart valves, which prevent backflow. The heart is enclosed in a protective sac, the pericardium, which also contains a small amount of fluid. The wall of the heart is made up of three layers: epicardium, myocardium, and endocardium.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “heart” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.