New imaging techniques in cognitive neuroscience have produced a deluge of information correlating cognitive and neural phenomena. Yet our understanding of the inter-relationship between brain and mind remains hampered by the lack of a theoretical language for expressing cognitive functions in neural terms. We propose an approach to understanding operational laws in cognition based on principles of coordination dynamics that are derived from a simple and experimentally verified theoretical model. When applied to the dynamical properties of cortical areas and their coordination, these principles support a mechanism of adaptive inter-area pattern constraint that we postulate underlies cognitive operations generally.