Remembrance with gazes passed: Eye movements precede continuous recall of episodic details of real-life events

Autobiographical memory entails reconstructing the visual features of past events. Eye movements are associated with vivid autobiographical recollection, but this research has yet to capitalize on the high temporal resolution of eye-tracking data. We aligned eye movement data with participants simultaneous free recall of a verified real-life event, allowing us to assess the temporal correspondence of saccades to production of episodic and non-episodic narrative content at the millisecond level. Eye movements reliably predicted subsequent episodic - but not non-episodic - details by 250-1100 ms, suggesting that they facilitate episodic recollection by reinstating spatiotemporal context during vivid recollection. Assessing the relationship of oculomotor responses to naturalistic memory informs theory as well as diagnosis and treatment of conditions involving pathological recollection, such as Alzheimers disease and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).