Research trends and hotspots in task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (tb-fMRI): a bibliometric analysis

Background: Task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (tb-fMRI) is an effective tool for brain activity and cognition assessment in neuroscience and psychology. Objectives: This study aimed to identify trends and key topics in tb-fMRI by employing bibliometric methods. Methods: A bibliometric study of all tb-fMRI literature between 1994 and 2024 was carried out, using data from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). The dataset includes publication counts, citations, titles, authors, institutions, countries, keywords, and journals. Visualization and keyword co-occurrence analyses were conducted using VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and R Bibliometric. Results: A total of 4726 eligible English articles were analyzed, there was a significant growth trend in tb-fMRI publications, peaking in 2013 with 271 articles. The total publication volume was highest for the USA ( n = 1690), followed by Germany ( n = 497) and China ( n = 486). The major contributing institutions were University of California system, Harvard University and University of London. The top three high impact journals were: Diabetes, Diabetes Care , and PLOS One . The top high impact authors were Calhoun Vince D., Eickhoff Simon B., and Fink Gereon R. The keyword co-occurrence network analysis highlighted “fMRI,” “activation,” “brain,” “cortex,” and “prefrontal cortex” more frequently. Burst keywords analysis revealed the latest emergences of “brain network,” “connectivity,” “meta-analysis,” “individual differences,” and “representations.” Conclusions: This bibliometric analysis indicated an extensive increase in the tb-fMRI research development between 1994 and 2024. Key research themes included functional connectivity, meta-analysis and brain networks. Future research is likely to focus on individual variability and neural representation theories.