Question

What is so special about the tissue present in the heart?

Answer 1

Hint: The heart is the central part of the circulatory system. It functions by pumping blood to all the parts of the body. There are mainly four types of tissues found in the human heart. They include connective tissue, epithelial tissue, muscle tissue, and nervous tissue.

Complete answer:
Cardiac muscle tissue is a specialized muscle tissue that is present only in the heart. The contractions of this muscle, which are rhythmic, help to pump out blood through the blood vessels to all the parts of the body. The cardiac muscle is controlled by the brain and it is involuntary. The cells of cardiac muscle are known as cardiomyocytes and are branched and cylindrical. They are uninucleate and striated. These cells are shorter than skeletal muscle cells.

Intercalated disks are present between the cells of the cardiac muscle and the cells are attached to each other by desmosomes. The intercalated disks help the tissue to be locked tightly. Specialized cells known as pacemaker cells are present. They control the heart contractions. It works by the nervous system sending signals to the pacemaker cells which results in either speeding up or slowing down the heart rate. The pacemaker cells are connected to other cardiac muscle cells. This allows them to pass along the signals, which results in contractions of the cardiac muscle, which in turn makes the heartbeat.

Thus the correct answer is cardiac muscle.

Note: The cardiac muscles present in the heart are also found in the main blood vessels that are at the junction of the heart. The term tissue was coined by Xavier Bichat. The study of tissues is known as histology.