Reply Gastroenterology Premysl Berčík, Pavel Kučera  Gastroenterology  Volume 120, Issue 1, Pages 320-321 (January 2001) DOI: 10.1016/S0016-5085(01)87984-1 Copyright © 2001 American Gastroenterological Association Terms and Conditions

Fig. 1 A typical spatiotemporal map in which contractions originate repetitively at a specific site (“dominant pacemaker”) in the middle of the segment (arrow) and propagate, uninterrupted, across the whole intestinal segment (one contraction depicted by white line). The force of contraction is uniform throughout the loop; there is no discernable region of inhibition or excitation. This is a complex motor pattern, different from the figure shown in Dr. Sander's letter, which illustrates a well-known principle of excitation-contraction coupling. Each horizontal line in the map represents one video image (5 images/s). x-axis, position along the loop, y-axis, time. Lighter regions represent contracted tissue and darker regions relaxed tissue (for details, see Berčík et al.1). Gastroenterology 2001 120, 320-321DOI: (10.1016/S0016-5085(01)87984-1) Copyright © 2001 American Gastroenterological Association Terms and Conditions