What is the most interesting part of the brain?

Abstract

Creative ideas and rigorous analysis are the hallmarks of much impactful science. However, there is an oft-aired suspicion in the neuroscience community that some scientists start with an advantage, simply because of the brain region or behaviour they study. We tested this unstated hypothesis by regressing the journal impact factor against both the pattern of brain activity and the experimental keywords across thousands of brain imaging studies. We found the results to be illuminating.

Figure 1

(a) Distributions of activation frequency across the brain. Popular voxels are portrayed in red; unpopular ones in blue. (b) Frequency distribution of keywords describing experimental domains, paradigms, and functional contrasts. The size of each word is proportional to its frequency in the BrainMap database. Graphics reproduced with permission from http://www.wordle.net.

Figure 2

(a) Brain regions that correlate positively (red) and negatively (blue) with journal impact factor. Only voxels activated in more than 30 studies are considered in the analysis. (b) Relation between experimental keyword and impact factor. In one of these two word clouds, large words have positive correlations with impact factor. In the other, large words exhibit negative correlations. Which word cloud is which? Graphics reproduced with permission from http://www.wordle.net.