Association between Physical Activity and Exercise with Cognitive Function: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Background: Visualization is a practical method to determine a scientific field’s underlying intellectual framework. This study aims to conduct a scientometric analysis of selected scientific literature to assess research trends regarding the association between physical activity exercise, and cognitive function domains. The objective is to present a summary of the findings and identify the trending topics between 1970 and 2023 for this field of study.Methods: In the current bibliometric analysis, relevant documents based on a reliable search strategy taken from the Web of Science (WOS) database were checked and evaluated using Excel, VOSviewer, and the bibliometrix R-package.ssResults: The hot topics included Physical Activity, Exercise, Cognition, Aging, Dementia, Depression, Alzheimer’s disease, and Rehabilitation. “Frontiers in Psychology” and “International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health” were the most active journals in this research area. Also, developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Germany were the most productive countries. In addition, the top organizations which produced the most scientific documents were from Europe, Oceania, and North America. In the same vein, Arthur F Kramer was identified as the most active author. The study results will greatly contribute to future interdisciplinary articles by showing common trends in this research area.Conclusion: The combination of PA and cognitive function is still a hot zone of future research. According to this study, the majority of literature on PA and cognitive function is from developed countries, and other cognition topics such as executive function, memory, and anxiety have obtained less attention from researchers.

Keywords

• bibliometric
• physical activity
• cognitive function
• exercise
• scientometrics