  How the brain co-ordinates the actions of distant regions in an efficient
manner is an open problem. Many believe that cross-frequency coupling between
the amplitude of high frequency local field potential oscillations in one
region and the phase of lower frequency signals in another may form a possible
mechanism. This work provides a preliminary study from both an experimental and
theoretical viewpoint, concentrating on possible coupling between the
hippocampus and pre-frontal cortex in rats during tasks involving working
memory, spatial navigation and decision making processes. Attempts to search
for such coupling events are made using newly developed MATLAB scripts. This
leads to the discovery of increased envelope-to-signal correlation (ESC)
between the 1-10 Hz hippocampus theta and 30-40 Hz pre-fontal cortex gamma
bands when a choice turn is approached during a T-maze task. From a theoretical
perspective, a standard connectionist modelling approach is extended to allow
for the formation of oscillations. Although detrimental to overall average task
performance, this did lead to a reduced increase in performance variation as
noise was increased, when compared to a standard non-oscillating model.
