Livewired
Outstanding popular science. - Kirkus (Starred Review)
"[D]elivers an intellectually exhilarating look at neuroplasticity.... Eagleman’s skill as teacher, bold vision, and command of current research will make this superb work a curious reader’s delight." - Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"Eagleman brings the subject to life in a way I haven’t seen other writers achieve before." - New Scientist
"Since the passing of Isaac Asimov, we haven't had a working scientist like Dr. Eagleman, who engages his ideas in such a variety of modes. "Livewired" reads wonderfully, like what a book would be if it were written by Oliver Sacks and William Gibson, sitting on Carl Sagan's front lawn.” - Wall Street Journal
"Gets the science right and makes it accessible... completely upending our basic sense of what the brain is in the process.... Exciting." - Harvard Business Review
"The pages of LIVEWIRED are chock-full of mind bending ideas and dazzling insights. Eagleman's infectious enthusiasm, his use of fascinating anecdotes, and his clear, effortless prose render the secrets of the brain’s adaptability into a truly compelling page-turner." - Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner
"A vital addition to the pop-neuroscience canon." - Undark Magazine
"Fascinating work... recommended for readers interested in neuroscience, technology, and the intersection of the two." - Library Journal (starred review)
"David Eagleman, the Jolly Sherlock Holmes of neuroscience, makes me believe that the universe of possibility required to create utopia is already housed in each of our brains. His knowledge and enthusiasm are intoxicating. His book demonstrates the principle about which he is writing; my mind has been changed by his words." - Russell Brand
"Livewired is terrific. If you have a mind, David Eagleman will boggle it for you." - Hugh Laurie
"Brain-bending, original and beautifully explained neuroscience from the brilliant David Eagleman. Learn about your mind and then have it blown…" - Isaac Hempstead Wright, actor, Game of Thrones
"David's a brilliant writer and thinker, and he knows more about how we tick and why we tick than anyone I know." - Neil Gaiman, author
"I read David Eagleman's magnificent new book about a month ago, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Eagleman has (once again) permanently altered the way I experience my brain's complex and creative dance with the outside world." - Annaka Harris, author of Conscious
“An altogether fascinating tour of the astonishing plasticity and interconnectedness inside the cranial cradle of all of our experience of reality, animated by Eagleman’s erudite enthusiasm for his subject, aglow with the ecstasy of sensemaking that comes when the seemingly unconnected snaps into a consummate totality of understanding.”- Maria Popova, Brain Pickings
Livewired hit the shelves on August 25, 2020. It’s about how the brain constantly reconfigures its own circuitry.
I live in Silicon Valley, where all the talk is about the power of hardware and software. But I assert the next century is going to be all about liveware. What is liveware? It’s machinery that reconfigures itself, that adjusts and adapts to whatever’s going on around it to optimize its function.
This might sound fantastical, but we carry this futuristic machinery inside our skulls. At the moment, we have no idea how to build this stuff. But we know it should be possible, because everyone reading these words is an existence proof. Possessors of this livewired machinery, we drop into the world and absorb everything around us, from our local languages to the beliefs of our societies.
Livewired is the first book of its kind to address how the brain does this. What are the principles that emerge from neuroscience? I’m happy to say that this book not only distills the scientific literature into its fundamental points, but also that the writing of this book gave me a view to some next steps, such that I’m able to propose some big new hypotheses: for example, why we dream, and how that’s related to the rotation of the planet.
Some of you may know that I gave a TED talk a few years ago on how we can leverage the principles of livewiring to feed totally new kinds of data streams into the brain (and we’ve now built specialized hardware with which to do this), and I dive deep and wide on this notion in the book. Moreover, I get to address a million cool questions. Why does the world’s best archer not have any arms? Can we control a robot with our thoughts, just as we do our fingers and toes? What does drug withdrawal have in common with a broken heart? What is memory… and why is the enemy of memory not time, but other memories? How can a blind person learn to see with her tongue, or a deaf person learn to hear with his skin? I cover biohackers, humans using echolocation, and the present and future of AI.
From talking with people all around the globe, I think you’ll enjoy this book. Thank you for joining me here on this journey of discovery.
Select media appearances about Livewired:
Radio / Podcasts
[Color figure for Chapter 7]
Look at the image above, made up of green horizontal and red vertical lines. Stare at the colored lines for a bit: the red lines for a few seconds, then the green lines, then the red lines again, and then the green lines. Do this for about three minutes.
When you're done, look at the black and white lines below. You’ll see that the spaces between the horizontal lines look reddish. And the spaces between the vertical lines look greenish.
Why? Because when you stared at the colored figure, your brain realized that greenness had become tied to horizontal and redness to vertical, and so it adjusted to cancel out this strange feature of the world. When you look at the black and white lines, you experienced the aftereffect: the horizontal lines were being internally shifted toward the opposite color - red - and vertical toward green. 
