In an attempt to understand what makes us tick, researchers have been probing various regions of the brain, such as the premotor cortex, which helps make movement possible, and the auditory cortex, responsible for processing what we hear. But neuroscientists now say communication between regions—as opposed to within the areas themselves—may be the key that has eluded analysis until now, in part, because of technological obstacles.

"We hypothesized that two [neuronal] groups can only communicate efficiently with each other when their rhythms are coordinated, or synchronized," wrote Pascal Fries and Thilo Womelsdorf, neuroscientists at the F. C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, in an e-mail interview with Scientific American Online. "If the rhythms are not coordinated, then one group sends information over while the other is not ready to take it on and vice versa."