Certain aspects of the present disclosure support techniques for time synchronization of spiking neuron models that utilize multiple nodes. According to certain aspects, a neural model (e.g., of an artificial nervous system) may be implemented using a plurality of processing nodes, each processing node implementing a neuron model and communicating via the exchange of spike packets carrying information regarding spike information for artificial neurons. A mechanism may be provided for maintaining relative spike-timing between the processing nodes. In some cases, a mechanism may also be provided to alleviate deadlock conditions between the multiple nodes.