■ Free recall is a fundamental paradigm for studying memory retrieval in the context of minimal cue support. Accordingly, free recall has been extensively studied using behavioral methods. However, the neural mechanisms that support free recall have not been fully investigated due to technical challenges associated with probing individual recall events with neuroimaging methods. Of particular concern is the extent to which the uncontrolled latencies associated with recall events can confer sufficient design efficiency topermitneural activation for individual conditions tobe distinguished. The present study sought to rigorously assess the feasibility of testing individual free recall events with fMRI. Weused both theoretically and empirically derived free recall latency distributions to generate simulated fMRI data sets and assessed design efficiency across a range of parameters that describe free recall performance and fMRI designs. In addition, two fMRI experiments empirically asse...
Ilke Öztekin, Nicole M. Long, David Badre