The study demonstrates that the ventricular muscle action potential has separable spike and plateau components, with the plateau being essential for twitch contractions.
Plateau phase may drive contraction in isolated animal ventricular muscle; leaves open translation to human electrophysiology or practice.
The compound nature of the ventricular muscle action potential was demonstrated. Two thresholds, one for spike and the other for plateau generation were observed in the frog ventricles under action of Mn2+, and even more clearly in hypertonic Ringer solutions containing glycerol and Mn2+. Twitch contractions occurred only with appearance of the plateau. Tetrodotoxin eliminated the spike, leaving a plateau-like response behind. The Na+-spike is thought normally to trigger the plateau response which relates somehow to Ca2+-influx and release and thus to the initiation of contraction.
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Goto et al. (1969) studied this question.
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