neuroscience - Carolyn CC Hart

The photo shows a billboard for the AI company exa.ai. eaturing a magnificient white pegasus unicorn flying over a cotton candy pink clouds. There’s a clear blue sky in the background, and an arcing rainbow. The text reads 'Hallucintaions are fun, but not from your AI."

AI Marketing Has a Hallucination Problem

I hallucinate. These forced perceptions come to me only at night and are, at times, terrifying. Sometimes, right as I fall to sleep, I open my eyes and see large objects that look like multilegged mutant starfish. They dangle in the air above my head shimmering and swirling, their bodies crazed like pottery. They appear…

The word synesthesia as seen by CC Hart and when perceived via grapheme-color synesthesia

Words, Words, Words…

My partner and I like to play the Spelling Bee game in the New York Times. We have a strategy; I try to solve the pangrams while he picks away at the other words on the list. It’s typical for us to learn an unfamiliar word every few puzzles, often from the field of ornithology.…

The Color of Summer

Just another fog-shrouded summer day in The Sunset. Spring is yielding to summer here in California and there’s no surer sign of that transition in San Francisco than the ubiqutous fog bank that hangs over the Sunset District. In this neighborhood at the western edge of the city, summer days are gray and cool with…

Tooth and Nail

By: Carolyn CC Hart May 4, 2017January 2, 2020

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I recently read Dr. Joel Salinas’ fascinating memoir Mirror Touch: Notes From A Doctor Who Can Feel Your Pain. It’s an expertly written account of a life shaped by synaesthetic perception, and I feel honored that Joel interviewed me for this project and shared some of my experiences in his book. I’ve been elated over…

Monstrous

“The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination”-Richard Wright According to the OED, my favorite writer’s resource, the word “monstrous” refers to not only a large, ugly, and imaginary creature, but to something which is extraordinary and/or unnatural. I’ve often felt my mirror-touch synaesthesia fits that second description; it’s outside of the…

Midnight Clear

By: Carolyn CC Hart December 25, 2016May 19, 2019

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I’m curious about the potential for co-morbidities in synaesthetes. My interest in the psychological and neurological conditions that are concurrent with synaesthesia is rooted in my own family’s diffuse weirdness, and amplified by the fascinating line up at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland for UKSA2016. Duncan Carmichael PhD (University of Sussex) presented on “The Health…

Built for Hurt

By: Carolyn CC Hart July 13, 2016May 19, 2019

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Photo courtesy of Roberto Vongher and Wikimedia Commons I’m delighted to have my essay “Built for Hurt” published in the inaugural issue of qualia, an “experimental journal dedicated to creative and critical thinking at the intersection of the arts, humanities, and medical sciences. With a focus on lived experiences, embodied encounters, phenomenological investigations and…

Take a Hike!

Join me for a synesthetic hike through San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury! Very few people are synesthetes; researchers in the field of neuroscience estimate less than 4 percent of the population has some form of entwined senses. But, even though synesthesia is rare, interest in this neurological phenomenon is rapidly expanding. Currently, there are numerous scientific…