Deviate: The Creative Power of Transforming Your Perception - Softcover

Lotto, Beau

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1474601022 ISBN 13: 9781474601023

Publisher: W&N, 2018

Synopsis

World-renowned neuroscientist Beau Lotto reveals the truths of human perception and devises a cognitive toolkit for how to succeed in a world of uncertainty.

Perception is the foundation of human experience, but few of us understand how our own perception works. By revealing the startling truths about the brain and perception, Beau Lotto shows that the next big innovation is not a new technology: it is a new way of seeing.

In his first major book, Beau Lotto draws on over a decade of pioneering research to show how our brains play tricks on us. With an innovative combination of case studies and optical- and perception-illusion exercises, DEVIATE will revolutionise the way you see the world. With this new understanding of how the brain works and its perceptive trickery, we can apply these insights to every aspect of life and work. DEVIATE is not just an engaging look into the neuroscience of thought, behaviour and creativity: it is a call to action, enlisting readers in their own journey of self-discovery.

About this title

Review

'If someone else told me that reality is something we create in our heads - I'd up my medication. This brilliantly written book shows us that this is actually the road to liberation. We have the ability to change our internal landscapes. Making our lives a masterpiece rather than a "been there done that" cliche' (Ruby Wax OBE)

'Beau Lotto's Deviate is the beginning of a conversation - with yourself. Based on my years working at Pixar and with Tibetan Buddhist meditation masters, Beau is on exactly the right track for using neuroscience to understand the mechanisms that keep us stuck and the power of paying attention to the mind. And he does it with an infectious enthusiasm that cannot help but draw the reader into this engaging material' (Lawrence Levy, former CFO and board member of Pixar Animation Studios)

'In Deviate, Beau Lotto's remarkable research into human perception is crystallised into a series of astute explanations of how we experience reality...Lotto's ingenious account of the brain's perceptive evolution arrives at an extraordinary proposition of how we can go beyond our current ways of seeing. Following Olafur Eliasson's words that "what we have in common is that we are different", Deviate unravels the bind to our human history in order to foresee a radically different future for a reconfigured, individual perception. It is a brilliant book!' (Hans Ulrich Obrist, Director of the Serpentine Gallery, London)

'Beau Lotto is the ideal writer for a popular book about the neuroscience of perception. He has already proved himself to be an immensely engaging and daring populariser of science. Above all, he is a well-established neuroscientist who really knows what he is talking about. In this book he will convince you that our every-day experience of seeing is far more mysterious and exciting than it seems' (Professor Christopher D. Frith, Professor of Neuroscience at UCL)

'In a brilliant and skilful way Beau Lotto pulls the rug from under our naive view of reality...we discover how our conventional way of seeing, of perceiving reality, is incomplete and illusory...in doing so, he opens the curtain to a new beginning, a new beginning of seeing past our individual interpretation of reality, to recognize that others may surely have a different interpretation. In daring us to deviate Lotto encourages us to discover that compassion has a root that can be revealed through scientific insights' (Peter Baumann, Founder of Tangerine Dream)

'Beau Lotto shows better than anyone else how dependent we are upon our own limited sensory perceptions of the world. The radical thesis that he presents in Deviate reveals to us that reality is relative, and that we, ultimately, are capable of changing our world through changing our perception of it' (Oafur Eliason, leading artist)

'What if we all tried harder to be misunderstood? And what if we could embrace and channel our own misunderstanding of the world around us? Beau Lotto's Deviate honours the messy, imperfect genius of human perception as the most valuable resource for creative progress. Lotto is teaching us something so loudly fundamental to our existence, it seems almost impossible that we've missed it: "You're the only one seeing what you see..." - and that's the catalyst of your most innovative and compelling work' (Ross Martin, Executive Vice-President, Marketing Strategy and Engagement at Viacom)

'Lotto, a brilliant neuroscientist, explains why our perceptual hardwiring makes it difficult for us to live with uncertainty, a condition necessary for us to become more empathetic, creative, and successful...His insights help us understand just why leading change and innovation is so challenging and how great leaders ask great questions. Deviate shows us how to re-engineer our brains to be more effective in leading our organizations and in living our lives' (Linda Hill, Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School)

'Beau Lotto has delivered a fresh, provocative, stimulating, revealing, neuro-inspired, entertaining text on that most fugitive of subjects - reality. He explores the fact that the only certainty about certainty is its uncertainty and questions what questions we should be asking to enable human and social progress in a world becoming ever more cybernetic' (Professor Ian Ritchie, CBE RA RIBA, Director of Ian Ritchie Architects)

'Beau Lotto weaves a fascinating saga about how we shape reality to our survival needs by altering our perceptions. And when we deviate from our "way of seeing", we invent. So he engages us with a host of philosophical ideas and brain-changing experiences to explore why we see what we see and how we create. This book is beautifully written - giving us a truly novel, playful and sophisticated window into the nature of human perception and innovation that is highly relevant for thinking about how to create a successful relationship' (Dr Helen Fisher, Biological Anthropologist)

Book Description

Deviate by world-renowned neuroscientist Beau Lotto is 'a more accessible, fun, interactive version of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow' (David Rowan, editor-at-large, Wired)

Edition details

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1474601022
• ISBN 13: 9781474601023
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352