Embodiments of the invention relate to canonical spiking neurons for spatiotemporal associative memory. An aspect of the invention provides a spatiotemporal associative memory including a plurality of electronic neurons having a layered neural net relationship with directional synaptic connectivity. The plurality of electronic neurons configured to detect the presence of a spatiotemporal pattern in a real-time data stream, and extract the spatiotemporal pattern. The plurality of electronic neurons are further configured to, based on learning rules, store the spatiotemporal pattern in the plurality of electronic neurons, and upon being presented with a version of the spatiotemporal pattern, retrieve the stored spatiotemporal pattern.