ReviewJournal of cardiovascular development and disease2022
When Does the Human Embryonic Heart Start Beating? A Review of Contemporary and Historical Sources of Knowledge about the Onset of Blood Circulation in Man.
Review in Journal of cardiovascular development and disease, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Early atherogenesis: In search of etiology.International journal of cardiology. Cardiovascular risk and prevention · 2026Review
- Spaceborne and spaceborn: Physiological aspects of pregnancy and birth during interplanetary flight.Experimental physiology · 2026Review
- Hyaluronan Underlies the Emergence of Form, Fate, and Function in Human Cardioids.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Advancing Cardiac Organoid Engineering Through Application of Biophysical Forces.IEEE reviews in biomedical engineering · 2024Article
- Alternative Splicing in the Heart: The Therapeutic Potential of Regulating the Regulators.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Early heart development: examining the dynamics of function-form emergence.Biochemical Society transactions · 2024Review
- The Functional Significance of Cardiac Looping: Comparative Embryology, Anatomy, and Physiology of the Looped Design of Vertebrate Hearts.Journal of cardiovascular development and disease · 2024Review
- The changing morphology of the ventricular walls of mouse and human with increasing gestation.Journal of anatomy · 2024Article
- Characterizing Early Cardiac Metabolic Programming via 30% Maternal Nutrient Reduction during Fetal Development in a Non-Human Primate Model.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Formation of the Heart: Defining Cardiomyocyte Progenitors at Single-Cell Resolution.Current cardiology reports · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The onset of embryonic heart beating may be regarded as the defining feature for the beginning of personal human life. Clarifying the timing of the first human heartbeat, therefore, has religious, philosophical, ethical, and medicolegal implications. This article reviews the historical and contemporary sources of knowledge on the beginning of human heart activity. Special attention is given to the problem of the determination of the true age of human embryos and to the problem of visualization of the human embryonic heart activity. It is shown that historical and current textbook statements about the onset of blood circulation in man do not derive from observations on living human embryos but derive from the extrapolation of observations on animal embryos to the human species. This fact does not preclude the existence of documented observations on human embryonic heart activity: Modern diagnostic (ultrasound) and therapeutic (IVF) procedures facilitate the visualization of early embryonic heart activity in precisely dated pregnancies. Such studies showed that the human heart started its pumping action during the fourth post-fertilization week. A small number of direct observations on the heart activity of aborted human embryos were reported since the 19th century, but did not receive much recognition by embryologists.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.