Naturalistic recall preserves temporal specificity despite cortical feature reorganization

Neural activity during free recall of a Sherlock episode preserves temporal specificity within narrative events, with association cortex distinguishing moments despite cortical feature reorganization.

• Why it matters: Recall is temporally compressed and event-structured, but it is unclear whether event timing is retained in neural signals and how recalled feature representations reorganize versus perception.
• What they did: Using fMRI from viewing and free recall, the team applied a data-driven alignment to identify neural recapitulation of narrative events and tested how low-level visual through semantic features predicted recall reinstatement.
• The result: Feature-level predictive differences shrink during recall, and feature organization reverses along the cortical sensory-to-association gradient, implying temporal specificity can persist despite representational reorganization.

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