I think you might be misinterpreting that. The columns represent the letter. They’re an SDR, not a grandmother cell. If the cells represent a path through letters, that is exactly the same as HTM to my understanding. Only less specific (trained) to a single cell in what I’m proposing.
Zoos of different types of cells working as an ensemble, I grant you. I’m thinking entirely in terms of sequence representation elements. Whatever they could be. The equivalent of the CLA in HTM. So perhaps one layer at this point. In particular I’m interested to hear about different inhibitory cells. The ones I’m thinking of at this stage inhibit fairly globally. I think you said there’s a kind which have that property. What other kinds are there?
But the mechanism I’m thinking about might be on the level of the sequence representation mechanism in that paper you cited earlier. Here:
I think they conjectured it as a mechanism for where… part of the parietal cortex??