An overview of transcranial magnetic stimulation research with bibliometric Indicators

Abstract

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive technique increasingly used in basic and clinical research practices around the world. Its established clinical applications include treatment of major depression and presurgical functional mapping of the motor and language cortexes. In experimental and clinical trials have aimed to test the therapeutic and diagnostic utility of TMS in a range of disease states, including obsessive–compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, autism, strokes, tinnitus, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, traumatic brain injury, multiple sclerosis, migraine, and dystonia. To quantitatively analyze the current worldwide progress in TMS research based on the Web of Science (WoS) database for the past 27 years. We conducted a quantitative analysis of articles regarding TMS that were published in English between 1988 and 2015 and that were indexed in the WoS database. In the past 27 years, there have been 14,077 studies on TMS indexed by the WoS database. The analysis results indicate that most of the research studies in the field were published by North American and European institutions. With respect to Asian countries, Japan also published a reasonable proportion of publications, but comparatively speaking, the number of publications is rare. From the perspective of research progress, we found that the number of published articles on TMS has increased significantly in the past 10 years.

Keywords

• bibliometric analysis
• rehabilitation
• reviews
• transcranial magnetic stimulation
• treatment
• web of science