How could two brain areas use a shared rhythm to talk to each other? · Grey Matter

In an oscillating group of neurons, inhibition opens and closes in each cycle, so the cells are most excitable during a short window of every cycle.

How could two brain areas use a shared rhythm to talk to each other?

In an oscillating group of neurons, inhibition opens and closes in each cycle, so the cells are most excitable during a short window of every cycle. If a sending area's spikes arrive at a receiving area during its excitable window, they have a strong effect; if they arrive during its inhibited phase, they are largely ignored. The communication-through-coherence hypothesis of Fries proposes that areas select whom to listen to by aligning the phase of their rhythms, gamma for feedforward signals and alpha-beta for feedback in the visual system. Too much synchrony would defeat the purpose, since a network in which everything fires together carries little information.