Constraints on sequence processing speed in biological neuronal networks

Sequence processing has been proposed to be the universal computation performed by the neocortex. The Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) model provides a mechanistic implementation of this form of processing. While the model accounts for a number of neocortical features, it is based on networks of highly abstract neuron and synapse models updated in discrete time. Here, we reformulate the model in terms of a network of spiking neurons with continuous-time dynamics to investigate how neuronal parameters such as cell-intrinsic time constants and synaptic weights constrain the sequence-processing spee