What influence does temperature have on the electrical conduction system of the heart?

If my heart isn't pretty close to 37C I'm not going to be worrying about its electrical properties much.

Why do you ask?

I was curious. I was studying the anatomy and physiology of the heart recently and temperature affecting the conductivity of the electrical circuit wasn't included so I asked and was told that they didn't understand the question then they said it didn't have any effect. However I know a small amount of physics I learned years ago and I would question this because generally temperature has an effect on the resistivity of circuits however I didn't know if I could logically apply what works for copper wire to the heart conduction system. The human heart consists of an electrical pacemaker

 

 

According to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1350689/in sheep

 

Cooling of Purkinje fibres from 37° C to room temperature (25° C) slowed the time course of the current and decreased its peak amplitude.

 

But I can't find any references to such studies on human heart conductivity.

Changes in an electrocardiogram (mV-amplitude per ms-time) occur during cases such as hypothermia. It's not a peer reviewed journal but it seems to be a fairly decent (no garantees) web-site that could be used as a starting point to modify your search terms, etc. http://www.equimedcorp.com/rhythms/topic/29/

Edited May 29, 201510 yr by GPS