Understanding how brain architecture and neural coordination generate different processing strategies is one of the greatest challenges of neuroscience. The goal of our work is to develop different computational strategies to understand the mechanisms by which hippocampal neural circuits process information across multiple levels. In this talk, I will discuss how the interaction of circuit, synaptic, and intrinsic neuronal properties determine firing preferences during learning, and how this neural activity forms population wide brain rhythms. We demonstrate how perisomatic inhibition interacts with different input pathways to shape in vivo activity of specific pyramidal neuron populations; how place field generation is best explained by a disinhibitory process; and demonstrate how detection and analysis of hippocampal dynamical activity using feature-based approaches can lead to deeper insights of the underlying neural activity. Together, we showed how advanced computational techniques such as modelling, evolutionary algorithms and artificial intelligence approaches can enhance our understanding of neural circuit processing.