A spatiotemporal memory that separates "what" and "when"

To process a spatiotemporal pattern, a short-term memory (STM) is needed to maintain the pattern over time. In general, a STM for storing a temporal sequence of input items should possess characteristics such as acting as a first-in-first-out buffer, storing multiple items of the same type, and encoding interval-invariant and rate-invariant representations of the input items. Some of these characteristics are lacking in existing STM models. This article presents a spatiotemporal STM that possesses all the above characteristics. It is achieved using a novel method of organizing the STM by separating the storage of spatial and temporal information.