Processing spatio-temporal patterns by mapping time into intensity

The author proposes a novel hybrid combination of networks for the processing of spatio-temporal patterns. While the instantaneous spatial components of patterns are translated into firing intensities of `grandmother´ cells, the temporal sequence of patterns is mapped into intensities of so-called TIM (time-intensity-mapping) cells. The TIM cells generate a corresponding (spatially distributed) activity pattern which in turn is processed by another set of grandmother cells. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated by using temporal sequences of letters. The robustness against distortions of transient pattern sequences is remarkable and may lead to applications of the TIM network in speech recognition