Home▸Medical Technology & Imaging Physics▸The Carotid Body: The Sensor That Keeps You Breathing

🫁 The Carotid Body: The Sensor That Keeps You Breathing

Explore how the tiny carotid bodies at the neck's carotid bifurcation detect falling oxygen and rising carbon dioxide to instantly adjust your breathing rate and depth.

Medical Technology & Imaging Physics3DModerate60 FPS

This simulator demonstrates how glomus cells in the carotid body respond to changing arterial oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, and how that signal travels through the glossopharyngeal nerve to alter breathing rate and depth.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Adjust the simulated arterial oxygen and carbon dioxide levels to see how glomus cell firing rate changes, and watch how the resulting reflex signal shifts the breathing pattern in real time.

💡 Did You Know?

Gram for gram, the carotid body receives one of the highest blood flow rates of any tissue in the human body, allowing its glomus cells to sense changes in arterial blood gases almost as fast as the blood itself changes.

⚙ Under the hood

Explore how the tiny carotid bodies at the neck's carotid bifurcation detect falling oxygen and rising carbon dioxide to instantly adjust your breathing rate and depth.

physiologyrespirationchemoreceptorscarotid bodybreathing controlaltitudesleep apneahomeostasis

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install