Home▸Medical Technology & Imaging Physics▸Cerebral Autoregulation: How the Brain Keeps Its Own Blood Flow Constant

🧠 Cerebral Autoregulation: How the Brain Keeps Its Own Blood Flow Constant

Explore how the brain maintains steady cerebral blood flow across a wide range of blood pressures through myogenic, metabolic and neurogenic autoregulation, and why this system fails in stroke and traumatic brain injury.

Medical Technology & Imaging Physics3DModerate60 FPS

This simulation shows how cerebral blood flow stays nearly constant across a broad range of arterial pressures, and how the pressure-flow curve changes shape when autoregulatory mechanisms are impaired or when carbon dioxide levels shift.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Adjust mean arterial pressure and CO2 levels with the sliders and watch how cerebral blood flow responds, then toggle impaired autoregulation to see how the protective plateau collapses.

💡 Did You Know?

A single breath-holding episode can raise CO2 enough to noticeably increase cerebral blood flow, while brief hyperventilation can lower it just as quickly, which is why controlled breathing is sometimes used to manage intracranial pressure in emergencies.

⚙ Under the hood

neurosciencephysiologycerebral blood flowautoregulationstroketraumatic brain injuryvascular biologyblood pressure

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