In one sense we did know about the capabilities of neurons, or at least made similar predictions. How all of the ingredients come together to achieve this is no

In one sense we did know about the capabilities of neurons, or at least made similar predictions. How all of the ingredients come together to achieve this is not understood. The computational properties of neurons are massively complex, e.g. local filtering in the dendrites, attenuation of depolarizations down the dendrite, the effect of local excitatory and inhibitory inputs, just to name a few. The authors of the manuscript present their interpretation of some of the these properties to achieve the goal of spatio-temporal pattern recognition by neurons (I haven't read past the manuscript yet). Others have done the same.