Imagine you're playing a game of basketball--running down the length of the court, your shoes squeaking and you're fingers bouncing the ball about every 2 strides. You're darting left and right, about to sneak under the goal, leap over defenders, and slam it in for 2 points.

The fans cheer in a wave of pure elation. (Admittedly, a creative imagination.)

There's a rhythm to playing basketball, like most sports. As you dribble the ball, researchers at University of Chicago describe, neurons in your motor cortex make sure you attend to the ball at just the right time. Delta brain waves anticipate the rhythm of bouncing and running, according to recent research, and beta brain waves make sure optimum attention is payed to the ball's position right before you thrust it towards the floor.

A study led by postdoc Maryam Saleh investigating how beta and delta brain waves are related to timing and attention appears in the Feb. 25th edition of Neuron.

During the study, a paralyzed patient was implanted with the aptly named device BrainGate (a brain-computer interface) in his motor cortex--the part of our brain that translates our intention into movement of our limbs.

This gave researchers a unique opportunity to record beta and delta brain waves at the cerebral source of movement. The scientists asked the patient to perform one main task: shift a cursor with his brain at the appropriate time. The patient was given a series of five instructions but told to only pay attention to the second and fourth. As it turns out, beta brain wave activity spiked just before the second or fourth instruction was given, but fell off dramatically before and during the other irrelevant instructions. Delta brain waves spiked in a pattern that mimicked the timing of each instructional cue, acting like an internal 'metronome,' or so they say.

Beta and delta brain waves were observed long before this research came to light in Feb. 25th edition of Neuron. "Previously, no one has been able to dissociate if beta oscillations are related to attention or to just holding, waiting to initiate movement," says Saleh. "Our results show that these oscillations are tied to the anticipation of oncoming information that is used to make a movement."

Attention seems like an important aspect of our brains to figure out.

Every day, we are are bombarded with perhaps billions of stimuli--cars honking, leaves bustling in the wind, birds flying overhead, people chatting...where did she get those fab earrings? But, we can only pay attention to a tiny fraction of these stimuli.

Attention is the gateway to brain function in the sense that nothing that doesn't get our attention (overt or peripheral) is considered in our decision making, actions, and responses. Attention tells us to focus in front of the car after we start the engine and shift into drive. The motor cortex tells us to slowly press the accelerator as we go uphill, to swerve left for bicyclists, or to hit the brake when a coyote darts in front of your headlights.

Beta and delta waves in the motor cortex are fine tuning attention and motor response all the while by syncing patterns in our environment with patterns in our brain waves.

"Low-frequency oscillations reflect the brain's plans" said Charles Schroeder, a researcher who also studies low-frequency oscillations in the cortex, " they are really critical."