Silence in the concert hall. The conductor raises the baton and the strings begin. They play the first four bars of Mozart's "A Little Night Music." All together they play a single melody, which is probably one of the best known in the music world. Then the voices divide. Different string instruments play separate melodies and the "Little Night Music" thus becomes a complex work of art. Scientists from the German Primate Center (DPZ) -- Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen and Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences in Tehran, Iran, recently discovered in a study with rhesus monkeys that nerve cells assume the role of musicians in visual perception in our brain. Usually many cells are active together (synchronously) when they process simple stimuli from our environment. The researchers were able to show that visual attention desynchronizes these nerve cells' activity and thus enables more complex information processing. Such insights into the neural mechanisms of attention in the healthy state may provide evidence of mechanisms underlying neuronal diseases such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism (BMC Biology). - www.sciencedaily.com