CC Hart is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work explores the intersections of synesthesia, perception, and neurodivergence. Bridging lived experience and academic inquiry, her research investigates how atypical sensory processing shapes cognition, creativity, and communication. Her work sits at the boundary of neuroscience, literary studies, and the medical humanities, with a particular emphasis on how subjective sensory experience can be translated, represented, and understood across disciplines.
Research Focus
Her research interests include:
- Synesthesia and cross-modal perception
- Mirror-touch and mirror-pain phenomena
- Neurodivergence and sensory processing differences
- Narrative medicine and patient-centered storytelling
- The translation of internal sensory experience into language and image
- The role of metaphor in describing neurological phenomena
Much of her work examines the tension between clinical descriptions of the body and the lived, subjective experience of perception—particularly in individuals whose sensory worlds do not conform to normative models.
Approach
Hart’s approach is both analytical and creative. She integrates:
- first-person narrative
- literary analysis
- visual art and experimental representation
- interdisciplinary scholarship
This hybrid methodology allows her to explore forms of knowledge that are often difficult to quantify, but deeply important to understanding human experience. Her work challenges purely reductionist models of perception, advocating instead for frameworks that account for complexity, ambiguity, and embodiment.
Selected Work & Presentations
Hart has presented research on synesthesia and neurodivergence in academic and interdisciplinary contexts, including:
- SWPACA (Southwest Popular/American Culture Association)
“super/natural: A Comparison of Synesthete Protagonists in Red Sparrow and Bitter in the Mouth*”* - UKSA / ASA Conference (Oxford)
Panel work on pain synesthesia and embodied perception - IASAS (International Association of Synaesthetes, Artists, and Scientists)
Ongoing contributions to interdisciplinary dialogue on synesthesia research and artistic practice
Her work has also appeared in publications connected to the medical humanities, including Ad Anima (UC Irvine School of Medicine).
Current Research
Current projects explore:
- The use of synesthesia as a framework for understanding non-normative perception
- The communicability of sensory experiences that resist conventional language
- The intersection of trauma, caregiving, and sensory development
- Experimental visual and narrative forms for representing internal perception
She is particularly interested in how emerging technologies—including AI—may both illuminate and obscure neurodivergent experience.