Although we have long known that our brains produce oscillations, we do not have a clear understanding of how they are generated. One of the main reasons for this stems from the multi-scale and multi-temporal nature of our brains. This makes it highly challenging to be able to obtain explanations for how oscillatory activities are produced. However, we need to address this challenge as it is becoming clear that oscillatory activities underlie brain function and they change during disease. In this talk I will describe how we are tackling this challenge by tightly linking models and experiments so that mathematical model development and usage can help lead to explanations. Our present focus is on a prominent rhythm involved in memory processing – theta rhythms in the hippocampus.