Scientometrics
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Aug 19, 2021; 11(8): 491-506
Published online Aug 19, 2021. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v11.i8.491
Knowledge domain and emerging trends in visual hallucination research: A scientometric analysis
Min Zhong, Zhuang Wu, Xu Jiang, Bo Shen, Jun Zhu, Li Zhang
Min Zhong, Zhuang Wu, Xu Jiang, Bo Shen, Jun Zhu, Li Zhang, Department of Geriatric Neurology, Affiliated Brain Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, Jiangsu Province, China
Li Zhang, Institute of Neuropsychiatric Diseases, Affiliated Brain Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, Jiangsu Province, China
Author contributions: Zhong M wrote the paper; Wu Z, Jiang X, and Shen B downloaded and analyzed the data; Zhang L and Zhu J designed the study.
Supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China, No. 2016YFC1306601; Special Funds of the Jiangsu Provincial Key Research and Development Program, No. BE2018610 and No. BE2019612; Jiangsu Provincial Cadre Health Projects, No. BJ16001 and No. BJ17006; Special Funds of the Jiangsu Provincial 333 High-level Talent Cultivation Projects; and Nanjing Medical Science and Technology Development Foundation, No. ZKX17031 and No. QRX17026.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Li Zhang, PhD, Doctor, Professor, Department of Geriatric Neurology, Affiliated Brain Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, No. 264 Guangzhou Road, Nanjing 210029, Jiangsu Province, China. neuro_zhangli@163.com
Received: November 29, 2020
Peer-review started: November 29, 2020
First decision: March 16, 2021
Revised: March 29, 2021
Accepted: July 5, 2021
Article in press: July 5, 2021
Published online: August 19, 2021
Processing time: 256 Days and 6.7 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Visual hallucination (VH) refers to a spontaneous visual perception without corresponding external stimuli and often occurs in ophthalmological and neuropsychiatric disorders. It is associated with poor quality of life, and increased patient hospitalization and nursing home admission. To date, a scientometric analysis of research on VH is lacking.

AIM

To objectively summarize the features of VH research and gain insights into the emerging trends in research on VH.

METHODS

CiteSpace V was used in this article. Publication outputs, document types, geographic distributions, co-authorship status, research hotspots, and co-citation status were analyzed. A total of 2176 original articles and 465 reviews were included in the database downloaded from the Web of Science Core Collection. We selected the top 50 most cited or occurring articles or items to create a visualized network with a 1-year interval. In the document co-citation analysis stage, we performed clustering analysis on co-cited references, and log likelihood tests were used to name the clusters.

RESULTS

The results showed that most publications can be classified into neurology, sports, and ophthalmology studies. In addition, North America, Europe, Asia and Australia published the most documents. Some well-known authors have always had a leading role in this field; meanwhile, new authors keep emerging. A relatively stable cooperation has been formed among many authors. Furthermore, neuropsychiatric symptom and functional connectivity are the top hotspots. Research on VH in dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson’s disease (PD) have received much attention. Studies on VH in PD are likely to be the new emerging trends in the future, especially the mechanisms of VH.

CONCLUSION

Research on VH has formed a complete system. More large-scale clinical and in-depth basic research are required to better understand the mechanisms underlying VH, which will contribute to our understanding of the pathophysiology and therapeutic options for VH.

Keywords: Visual hallucination; Psychiatry; Parkinson’s disease; Dementia with Lewy bodies; CiteSpace; Scientometric

Core Tip: Visual hallucination (VH) is very common and research on VH keeps emerging. In this review, CiteSpace V was used to objectively summarize the features of VH research and gain insights into the emerging trends for research on VH. Publication outputs, document types, geographic distributions, co-authorship status, research hotspots, and co-citation status were analyzed.