Basic neuroscience research suggests that neural assemblies communicate with each other in the temporal domain and rely on the coincidence of neural activity to detect phasic relationships between groups of neurons. Clinical neuroscience research suggests that communication and coordination failures between different brain regions may account for a wide range of problems in schizophrenia, from psychosis to cognitive dysfunction. This theme issue presents: an overview of time-frequency analyses that are used by clinical neuroscientists studying neural oscillations in schizophrenia; a comprehensive review of the literature on schizophrenia and neural asynchrony; data supporting dysfunction of both the GABA and glutamate systems in contributing to neural synchrony dysfunction in schizophrenia; and an example of how neural activity oscillating at different frequencies can form a code, which when disrupted could account for various symptoms of the illness. These papers illustrate approaches to translational neuroscience that will increase our understanding of schizophrenia and provide neurobiological endpoints for developing novel treatments.