[ESTA Membership Roster] [ESTA Meeting Rosters]

The  Electrical Signaling, Ion Transport and Arrhythmias study section reviews both basic and clinical applications concerned with cardiac and vascular electrical and mechanical activity, excitation-contraction coupling, electrophysiological aspects of normal and abnormal cardiovascular function, arrhythmias and sudden death. Studies involve humans and animals, in vitro and in vivo systems, molecular, genetic, electrophysiological, biochemical, biophysical, bioengineering, and computational approaches.  Emphasis is on ion transfer and transport mechanisms affecting cardiac rhythm disorders, impulse propagation, and cardiac and vascular smooth muscle contractility in hypertrophy, heart failure, ischemia, hypertension, congenital heart disease, and heart transplant.Specific Areas Covered by ESTA:

• Excitability, electrical propagation and repolarization in normal and diseased hearts, structure function of cardiac and vascular ion channels, ion exchangers, ion pump, connexins, excitation-contraction coupling proteins, basis of propagation, conduction system, and intercellular communication.
• Mediators and modulators of cardiac contractility, calcium homeostasis, calcium regulation, calcium sensitive proteins, neural regulation, redox regulation, genes and proteins that modulate cardiac excitability and contractility, regulation of ion channel function and expression.
• Cellular mechanisms of arrhythmogenesis, identification of genes and proteins, electrophysiological consequences of acquired heart diseases (e.g. ischemia, hypertension, heart failure, hypertrophy etc.).
• Computational techniques to predict arrhythmias, mathematical modeling of ion channels, myocytes, multi-cellular tissue and the whole heart, development and evaluation of interventions and devices to diagnose and treat cardiac rhythm disorders.

Study sections with most closely related areas of similar science listed in rank order are:

Cardiac Contractility, Hypertrophy, and Function [CCHF]
Myocardial Ischemia and Metabolism [MIM]
Vascular, Cell and Molecular Biology [VCMB] 
Bioengineering, Technology and Surgical Sciences [BTSS] 
Modeling and Analysis of Biological Systems [MABS]