Research Hotspots and Global Trends of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Stroke: A Bibliometric Analysis.

Transcranial direct current stimulation has been widely used in the clinical treatment of stroke. The purpose of this study was to perform a bibliometric analysis of scientific literature in this field. Articles and reviews regarding transcranial direct current stimulation in stroke from January 01, 2004 to May 31, 2022 were identified from the Science Citation Index-Expanded of the Web of Science Core Collection database. CiteSpace 6.1.R2, Bibliometrix and the Bibliometric Online Analysis Platform were used to analyze data. A total of 905 papers were obtained, with the highest number of publications coming from the USA. The institutions and authors with the most publications were Harvard Medical School and Fregni F respectively. Nitsche MA had the most co-citations, followed by Fregni F. Neurosciences was the most fruitful research area and Brain Stimulation had the highest H-index. The research topics could be divided into three sections: mechanisms of treatment, comparison of efficacy with transcranial magnetic stimulation, clinical application of post-stroke dysfunction. The field of "walking", "strength" and "virtual reality therapy" are the future research hotspots of transcranial direct current stimulation. The overall research showed a slow growth trend, and the outstanding contribution of the USA in this field cannot be ignored. Relevant researchers are suggested to focus on international collaboration and actively conduct high-quality randomized controlled clinical trials on research hotspots and frontiers in order to identify the optimal stimulation paradigm for clinical purposes.

Zhou K ，Zhou Y ，Zeng Y ，Zhang J ，Cai X ，Qin J ，Li Z ，Yan F ... -  《Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment》

Bibliometric and visual analysis of transcranial direct current stimulation in the web of science database from 2000 to 2022 via CiteSpace.

This study aimed to evaluate the current research hotspots and development tendency of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) in the field of neurobiology from a bibliometric perspective by providing visualized information to scientists and clinicians. Publications related to tDCS published between 2000 and 2022 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) on May 5, 2022. Bibliometric features including the number of publications and citations, citation frequency, H-index, journal impact factors, and journal citation reports were summarized using Microsoft Office Excel. Co-authorship, citation, co-citation, and co-occurrence analyses among countries, institutions, authors, co-authors, journals, publications, references, and keywords were analyzed and visualized using CiteSpace (version 6.1.R3). A total of 4,756 publications on tDCS fulfilled the criteria we designed and then were extracted from the WOSCC. The United States (1,190 publications, 25.02%) and Harvard University (185 publications, 3.89%) were the leading contributors among all the countries and institutions, respectively. NITSCHE MA and FREGNI F, two key researchers, have made great achievements in tDCS. Brain Stimulation (306 publications) had the highest number of publications relevant to tDCS and the highest number of citations (4,042 times). In terms of potential hotspots, we observed through reference co-citation analysis timeline viewer related to tDCS that "depression"#0, "Sensorimotor network"#10, "working memory"#11, and "Transcranial magnetic stimulation"#9 might be the future research hotspots, while keywords with the strong burst and still ongoing were "intensity" (2018-2022), "impairment" (2020-2022), "efficacy" (2020-2022), and "guideline" (2020-2022). This was the first-ever study of peer-reviewed publications relative to tDCS using several scientometric and visual analytic methods to quantitatively and qualitatively reveal the current research status and trends in the field of tDCS. Through the bibliometric method, we gained an in-depth understanding of the current research status and development trend on tDCS. Our research and analysis results might provide some practical sources for academic scholars and clinicians.

Sun W ，Song J ，Dong X ，Kang X ，He B ，Zhao W ，Li Z ，Feng Z ，Chen X ... -  《Frontiers in Human Neuroscience》

Global research trends in transcranial magnetic stimulation for stroke (1994-2023): promising, yet requiring further practice.

Li XY ，Hu R ，Lou TX ，Liu Y ，Ding L ... -  《Frontiers in Neurology》

Research Hotspots and Frontiers of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Stroke: A Bibliometric Analysis.

Li C ，Tu S ，Xu S ，Zhang Y ，Yan Z ，Jia J ，Tian S ... -  《Brain Sciences》

Research hotspots and trends of brain-computer interface technology in stroke: a bibliometric study and visualization analysis.

Li F ，Zhang D ，Chen J ，Tang K ，Li X ，Hou Z ... -  《Frontiers in Neuroscience》