sheng lin¹, qi chen¹; ¹South China Normal University

In recent years, there has been extensive research on human consciousness in response to stimuli near the perceptual threshold. However, studies focusing on consciousness elicited by suprathreshold audiovisual stimuli remain scarce. Through simple visual and auditory experiments employing intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG), we investigated the mechanisms underlying the loss of consciousness in humans and the regulation of primary cortical areas by higher-order cortical areas following consciousness loss.Our findings reveal that the excitation-to-inhibition (E/I) ratio in primary cortical areas is a direct determinant of consciousness loss. Furthermore, the E/I ratio is influenced by the connectivity between higher-order and primary cortical regions. Following consciousness loss, not only do the temporal dynamics of responses across brain networks change significantly, but higher-order cortical areas also regulate primary cortical areas in preparation for subsequent stimuli.