Parallel computation in spiking neural networks

Numerical quantities can be represented as phase differences between equiperiodic oscillating subsystems in a spiking neural net. It is then possible to represent integer variables, and the increment and decrement operations, X := X + 1, X := X - 1. It is possible to represent the if construction, the while construction, and some other programming language constructions, including variants of the Seq, Par, and Alt constructors, which were used in Occam. We give a general purpose parallel programming language with integer variables which can be systematically implemented in spiking neural networks. Addition, subtraction and multiplication are done, albeit inefficiently, as examples. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.