Home▸Medical Technology & Imaging Physics▸The Cushing Reflex: The Brain's Last-Resort Alarm

🚨 The Cushing Reflex: The Brain's Last-Resort Alarm

Explore the Cushing reflex, a life-threatening cardiovascular emergency triggered when rising intracranial pressure nearly stops blood flow to the brain, producing the classic triad of high blood pressure, slow heart rate, and irregular breathing.

Medical Technology & Imaging Physics3DModerate60 FPS

This simulator demonstrates how rising intracranial pressure erodes cerebral perfusion pressure and triggers the cascading Cushing reflex, letting you watch systemic blood pressure surge, heart rate fall, and breathing grow irregular as the brain fights to preserve its own blood supply.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Gradually increase intracranial pressure using the control and observe how mean arterial pressure, heart rate, and the breathing pattern respond in real time. Watch for the point at which cerebral perfusion pressure drops low enough to trigger the sympathetic surge, then track how the resulting hypertension provokes reflex bradycardia and how continued pressure elevation destabilizes the breathing rhythm.

💡 Did You Know?

Harvey Cushing first described this reflex in 1901 after observing it in laboratory animals subjected to artificially raised intracranial pressure, and it remains one of the few reflexes named directly for the person who characterized it rather than for its mechanism.

⚙ Under the hood

neurologyphysiologyintracranial pressurecardiovascularcritical carebrainstememergency medicine

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