Editorial: Imagination, cognition, and the arts

Because of its extensiveness, the topic of imagination requires a transdisciplinary approach, joining neuroscientific and cognitive research and studies on aesthetics regarding the fine arts and literature. In fact, the ambiguity and abundance of meanings in artistic works strongly engage the imagination of the image beholder and of the reader, triggering his/her cognitive faculties. Moreover, both the fine arts and literature may meta-represent imaginative processes, i.e., the phenomenological emergence of endogenous dynamic processes involving a cluster of cognitive faculties, activated by triggering the reader’s embodied simulation. This is why the four editors of this special issue have iproposed this topic to adress imagination form a transdisciplinary poin of view. Interesting empirical studies responded to this query and gave interesting insights to further studies.