Before revision:  We propose that background oscillations , an ubiquitous phenomenon throughout the brain, can mitigate this issue and thus implement the backbone for sampling-based computations in spiking neural networks.
After revision:  We propose that cortical oscillations can be effectively used to overcome this challenge. By acting as an effective temperature, background spiking activity modulates exploration. Rhythmic changes induced by cortical oscillations can then be interpreted as a form of simulated tempering. We provide a rigorous mathematical discussion of this link and study some of its phenomenological implications in computer simulations. This identifies a new computational role of cortical oscillations and connects them to various phenomena in the brain, such as sampling-based computations in spiking neural networks.