1 Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912.
2 Université Paris Cité, Institut Pasteur, AP-HP, Inserm, Fondation Pour l'Audition, Institut de l'Audition, IHU reConnect, Paris F-75012, France.
3 Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany.
4 Concordia University, Montréal, Quebec H3G 1M8, Canada.
5 Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee 37614.
6 Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (CerCo), UMR 5549 CNRS - Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse III, Toulouse F-31052, France benedikt.zoefel@cnrs.fr.

When exposed to rhythmic stimulation, the human brain displays rhythmic activity across sensory modalities and regions. Given the ubiquity of this phenomenon, how sensory rhythms are transformed into neural rhythms remains surprisingly inconclusive. An influential model posits that endogenous oscillations entrain to external rhythms, thereby encoding environmental dynamics and shaping perception. However, research on neural entrainment faces multiple challenges, from ambiguous definitions to methodological difficulties when endogenous oscillations need to be identified and disentangled from other stimulus-related mechanisms that can lead to similar phase-locked responses. Yet, recent years have seen novel approaches to overcome these challenges, including computational modeling, insights from dynamical systems theory, sophisticated stimulus designs, and study of neuropsychological impairments. This review outlines key challenges in neural entrainment research, delineates state-of-the-art approaches, and integrates findings from human and animal neurophysiology to provide a broad perspective on the usefulness, validity, and constraints of oscillatory models in brain-environment interaction.