FractionalRadix commented on Neural Networks: Algorithms, Applications, and Programming Techniques by James A. Freeman (Computation and Neural Systems Series)
Chapter 9 discusses spatio-temporal networks. The network presented here can recognize sequences. It is suggested that it could be used in speech recognition. Note that since this book is from the 1990's, there was still a lot of research to be done in that field. I don't know if the STN ended up playing a role in it, but it must have looked like a promising avenue of research at the time.