Beau Lotto - Deviate: the science of seeing differently

Combining evolutionary imperatives with modern imaging of the brain, Deviate helps us understand perception as the key to an individuals survival. It is written with humor, clarity, and delight. I highly recommend it.

Jerry Harrison, lead guitarist of the Talking Heads

Its time to deviate! Citizens of the world seem stuck in their paths, and are losing perception of whats there to enjoy as the mundane traps us in our tracks and routines. Beau Lotto teases our sense of adventure by suggesting we romp through our perceptions and break out of the framework. Deviate will give you a sense of yourself, whether youre a misfit or wish you were one!

Marian Goodell, co-founder and CEO of Burning Man

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 Lottos Deviate honors 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 weve missed it.

Ross Martin, executive vice president of Marketing Strategy and Engagement at Viacom

In Deviate, Beau Lottos remarkable research into human perception is crystallized into a series of astute explanations of how we experience reality. By bringing together an ecology of the senses that goes beyond the mechanisms of the eye, Lottos ingenious account of the brains perceptive evolution arrives at an extraordinary proposition of how we can go beyond our current ways of seeing. It is a brilliant book!

Hans-Ulrich Obrist, director of the Serpentine Galleries and author of The Interview Project

Beau Lotto has delivered a fresh, provocative, stimulating, revealing, neuro-inspired, entertaining text on that most fugitive of subjectsreality. The world of theoretical and experimental neuroscience has much to offer us as we search to produce better environments for all.

Ian Ritchie, director of Ian Ritchie Architects and architect of the largest free-standing glass building in the world

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 Eliasson, sculpture artist and spatial researcher, founder of Studio Olafur Eliasson

In a brilliant and skillful way, Beau Lotto pulls the rug from under our naive view of realitybit by bit. In reading this book, we discover how our conventional way of seeing, of perceiving reality, is incomplete and illusory. He begins to dismantle this illusion by showing us why we see the world the way we do and, in doing so, he opens the curtain to a new beginninga 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 is one of the most creative scientists I know, and his passion for introducing neuroscience to the public ranks him among those rare communicators like Carl Sagan whose ideas can change peoples thinking. At a time when many neuroscientists are pursuing the mindless goal of mapping all the connections in the human brain, Beau is right on target in his conviction that science advances by doubting the conventional wisdom and asking simple questions in a novel way.

Dale Purves, professor emeritus at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and member of the National Academy of Sciences

As a neuroscientist and a specialist in vision, Beau Lotto opens up the subject of just how it is possible to actually see and understand anything in the world when it seems that meanings are always constructed somehow separately from the reality of what we see. This is done with immense clarity and ease directly relevant to anyone involved in shaping our worlddesigners, engineers, and architects.

Alan Penn, professor of architectural and urban computing at University College London

If someone else told me that reality is something we create in our headsId 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 clich.

Ruby Wax, OBE, comedian, actress, mental health campaigner, and bestselling author of How Do You Want Me?

All knowing begins with a question. And a question begins with a quest (to state the obvious), as does life. At the core of living, then, is the courage to move, to step with doubt but step nonetheless (sometimes off a cliff, which is a less good step). Fortunately, no one steps alone (except that last one). My shuffles expressed here were and are enabled by the courage of others who in different ways enable me to live: My deviant Mum and Padre and Janet, my four mad sisters, my gorgeous gremlins Zanna, Misha and Theo, and my essential and beautiful (co-)explorer and creator Isabel. All incredibly colorful people who have shown me new ways of seeing, sometimes against my will (sorry), always to my benefit eventually. They are my why, my foundation for attempting to see freely, and the motivation to support others in their attempt to do so.