Figure 6.

The drawings show the essence of mural antagonism. During contraction, tangentially arranged chains of cardiomyocytes are subjected to a progressive decrease in hemodynamic afterload. Because of this, their force magnitude decreases over the cardiac cycle, thus producing a constrictive force component which is unloading in nature. In contrast, during cardiac contraction, those chains of cardiomyocytes aligned in transmural fashion are subjected to a progressive increase in intrinsic afterload. Their force magnitude, therefore, increases over the cardiac cycle, thus producing an antagonistic and dilatory force component, which is auxotonic in nature. Modified from Lunkenheimer et al., 2018 [16].