Naturalistic recall preserves temporal specificity despite cortical feature reorganization
- 1Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest
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.
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BibTeX
@misc{peng2026naturalistic,
title = {{Naturalistic recall preserves temporal specificity despite cortical feature reorganization}},
author = {S. Peng and B. Levine and B. R. Buchsbaum},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.64898/2026.11.03.763513},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.11.03.763513v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Naturalistic recall preserves temporal specificity despite cortical feature reorganization
AU - S. Peng
AU - B. Levine
AU - B. R. Buchsbaum
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/03
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.11.03.763513
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.11.03.763513v1
AB - 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.
ER -