Research on cognitive and sociocognitive functions in patients with brain tumours: a bibliometric analysis and visualization of the scientific landscape

Abstract

Background: Many patients with brain tumours exhibit mild to severe (neuro)cognitive impairments at some point during the course of the disease. Social cognition, as an instance of higher-order cognitive functioning, specifically enables initiation and maintenance of appropriate social interactions. For individuals being confronted with the diagnosis of a brain tumour, impairment of social function represents an additional burden, since those patients deeply depend on support and empathy provided by family, friends and caregivers.

Methods: The present study explores the scientific landscape on (socio)cognitive functioning in brain tumour patients by conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer. The Web of Science Core Collection database was examined to identify relevant documents published between 1945 and 2019.

Results: A total of 664 English titles on (socio)cognitive functions in patients with brain tumours was retrieved. Automated textual analysis revealed that the data available so far focus on three major topics in brain tumour patients: cognitive functions in general and in paediatric cases, as well as psychological factors and their influence on quality of life. The focus of research has gradually moved from clinical studies with cognitive functions as one of the outcome measures to investigations of interactions between cognitive functions and psychological constructs such as anxiety, depression or fatigue. Medical, neurological and neuropsychological journals, in particular neuro-oncological journals published most of the relevant articles authored by a relatively small network of well interconnected researchers in the field.

Conclusion: The bibliometric analysis highlights the necessity of more research on social cognition in brain tumour patients.

Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; Brain tumour; Cognition; Social cognition; VOSviewer.

Fig. 1

Main analysis. Number of published documents on cognitive and sociocognitive functioning in brain tumour patients per year. Visualization starts at 1974 since the first publication was detected in 1974

Fig. 2

Subanalysis. Number of published documents on cognitive and sociocognitive functioning in brain tumour patients per year. Visualization starts at 1994 since the first publication was detected in 1994

Fig. 3

Generated term map (density visualization) of selected terms identified from the titles and abstracts of all 664 documents representing areas of intensively researched domains in the field of cognitive and sociocognitive functions in brain tumour patients. Colour intensity is scaled to the number of (binary) occurrence of terms at each specific point and the co-occurrence of the neighbouring terms

Fig. 4

Generated term map (network visualization) of selected terms identified from the titles and abstracts of all 664 documents representing three major clusters (red, green and blue) and two minor thematic clusters (yellow and purple) based on term co-occurrence in research on cognitive and sociocognitive functions in patients with brain tumours. Circle size is scaled to the total number of (binary) occurrence of each term. Lines between terms indicate co-occurrence. Colours denote clusters based on term co-occurrence

Fig. 5

Generated term map (network visualization) of selected terms identified from the titles and abstracts of all 664 documents with chronological overlay to visualize tendencies in research on cognitive and sociocognitive functions in brain tumour patients over time. Circle size is scaled to the total number of (binary) occurrence of each term. Lines between terms indicate co-occurrence. Colours indicate average publication year of terms (see colour scale)

Fig. 6

Generated term map (density visualization) of selected terms identified from the titles and abstracts of 88 documents representing areas of intensively researched domains in the subanalysis. Colour intensity is scaled to the number of (binary) occurrence of terms at each specific point and the co-occurrence of the neighbouring terms

Fig. 7

Generated term map (network visualization) of selected terms identified from the titles and abstracts of 88 documents representing three major clusters (red, green and blue) and one minor thematic cluster (yellow) based on term co-occurrence in the subanalysis. Circle size is scaled to the total number of (binary) occurrence of each term. Lines between terms indicate co-occurrence. Colours denote clusters based on term co-occurrence

Fig. 8

Generated term map (network visualization) of selected terms identified from the titles and abstracts of 88 documents with chronological overlay to visualize research tendencies in the subanalysis over time. Circle size is scaled to the total number of (binary) occurrence of each term. Lines between terms indicate co-occurrence. Colours indicate average publication year of terms (see colour scale)

Fig. 9

Generated co-authorship map from all 664 documents to visualize the most prolific authors and their cooperation based on the number of co-authored documents. Circle size is scaled to the number of documents published. Links represent co-authorships. Colours represent clusters based on co-authorships

Fig. 10

Generated map of sources from 378 documents excluding meeting abstracts and meeting summaries to visualize the most impactful sources in the field of cognitive and sociocognitive functions in brain tumour patients based on the number of times they cite each other with chronological overlay to visualize tendency in publication properties over time. Circle size is scaled to the number of published documents. Links indicate the citations between sources. Colours represent average publication year of all documents published by each source (see colour scale)