This fits in quite nicely! These lateral connections between features can also help support another model, which I could explain later.
It seems it is possible for apical dendrites to cause bursting (ideal for a teaching signal):
Top-down dendritic input increases the gain of layer 5 pyramidal neurons
Gain increases were accompanied by a change of firing mode from isolated spikes to bursting where the timing of bursts coded the presence of coincident somatic and dendritic inputs. We propose that this dendritic gain modulation and the timing of bursts may serve to associate top-down and bottom-up input on different time scales.
Pyramidal neurons: dendritic structure and synaptic integration
Amplification of backpropagating action potentials by dendritic EPSPs can lead to bursting
Delivering current to two chambers simultaneously increases the level of neuronal excitability and decreases the threshold of input-output relation. Here the back-propagating APs facilitate the initiation of dendritic Ca2+ spike and evoke BAC firing.
Learning Rules for Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity Depend on Dendritic Synapse Location
The propagation of APs into the apical dendrite of layer 5 pyramidal neurons is modulated by dendritic depolarization, which can lead to a phenomenon called BAC-firing, in which single APs paired with dendritic depolarization generate dendritic calcium spikes and subsequent AP burst firing. These findings suggest that dendritic depolarization may influence the induction of STDP.
I primarily approached this problem from a computational perspective. I’m not a neuroscientist so I can’t really back any of this up sufficiently. Regardless, this is an interesting problem to take on given a rough & incomplete framework of cortical circuitry.