The present disclosure is directed to search and match operations of a spiking neural network (SNN) that performs in-memory operations. To model a computer-implemented SNN after a biological neural network, the architecture in the present disclosure involves different memory sections for storing inbound spike messages, synaptic connection data, and synaptic connection parameters. The section of memory containing synaptic connection data to identify matching inbound spike messages. Various embodiments are directed to an efficient search and match operation performed in memory to determine targeted synaptic connections.