Concurrent Associative Memories With Synaptic Delays

This article presents concurrent associative memories with synaptic delays useful for processing sequences of real vectors. Associative memories with synaptic delays were introduced by the authors for symbolic sequential inputs and demonstrated several advantages over other sequential memories. They were easy to organize and train. It was demonstrated that they were more robust than long short-term memories in recognition of damaged sequences. The associative memories can be applied in combination with deep neural networks to solve such symbol grounding problems, such as speech recognition, and support sequential memories triggered by sensory inputs. Several practical considerations for developed memories were discussed and illustrated. A continuous speech database was used to compare the developed method with LSTM memories. Tests demonstrated that the developed approach is more robust in recognition of speech sequences, particularly when the test sequences are damaged.