Convex subquivers and the finitistic dimension

Let $\cQ$ be a quiver and $K$ a field. We study the interrelationship of homological properties of algebras associated to convex subquivers of $\cQ$ and quotients of the path algebra $K\cQ$. We introduce the homological heart of $\cQ$ which is a particularly nice convex subquiver of $\cQ$. For any algebra of the form $K\cQ/I$, the algebra associated to $K\cQ/I$ and the homological heart have similar homological properties. We give an application showing that the finitistic dimension conjecture need only be proved for algebras with path connected quivers.