Naturalistic recall preserves temporal specificity despite cortical feature reorganization

Abstract

Although sensory input arrives in a largely continuous stream, recall is temporally compressed, discontinuous, and often structured as events. However, the temporal specificity of recall-related neural activity within events, and the separation and cortical organization of recalled features relative to perception, remain poorly characterized. We analyzed functional MRI data recorded during viewing and free recall of an episode of Sherlock. A data-driven alignment between viewing and recall data identified neural recapitulation of corresponding narrative events and revealed information that distinguished moments within events, particularly in the association cortex. Features ranging from low-level visual to semantic information predicted recall reinstatement. However, differences in predictive performance among feature levels became smaller during recall, and their organization along the cortical sensory-to-association gradient reversed relative to viewing. Thus, temporal specificity within events can be preserved despite substantial reorganization of feature representations across the cortex during recall.