Across established non-invasive neuromodulation and emerging deep-targeting strategies: a comparative bibliometric analysis of TI, TMS, tDCS, and tFUS/TUS/LIFU
- 1Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University
- 2School of Clinical Medicine, Guizhou Medical University
Abstract
Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) is expanding from conventional cortical modulation toward approaches capable of engaging deeper brain targets, but the literature structures of major modalities have rarely been compared within a common framework. We conducted a comparative bibliometric mapping review of temporal interference stimulation (TI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and transcranial focused ultrasound and related low-intensity ultrasound stimulation (tFUS/TUS/LIFU), using Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus records indexed from January 2017 to June 2026. After deduplication, relevance screening, targeted re-auditing, and corpus quality control, 32,017 records were retained (162 TI, 20,179 TMS, 10,576 tDCS, and 1,100 tFUS/TUS/LIFU). A strict ultrasound-neuromodulation core set ( n = 843) was used for modality-specific comparisons, giving a comparative dataset of 31,760 records. TI had the fastest relative growth from 2017 to 2025 (CAGR 64.6%) but the smallest absolute increase. In 10,000 size- and year-matched resamples, TI showed lower author-keyword Shannon diversity and higher Top-10 keyword concentration than matched TMS, tDCS, and tFUS/TUS/LIFU samples after joint Benjamini–Hochberg correction. The thematic pattern was also preserved when comparator corpora were expanded after record-level adjudication, when inclusion was restricted to title-defined records, and when the historical title-term procedure was applied to the contemporary datasets. The six thematic comparisons also remained significant under two-sided empirical testing. In contrast, when each modality was aligned to its own first 9 years, early TMS and tDCS were more thematically concentrated than TI, whereas early tFUS was less concentrated; this pattern persisted after broadening the historical tFUS corpus. Recent TI research activity also includes direct human deep-target validation and patient studies, alongside several registered clinical trials. These developments indicate translational activity beyond modeling and early proof-of-concept work. Together, these findings do not support a simple monotonic relationship between field age and thematic concentration across NIBS modalities, indicating that contemporary thematic concentration should not be interpreted as a direct proxy for bibliometric maturity.
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BibTeX
@article{wang2026across,
title = {{Across established non-invasive neuromodulation and emerging deep-targeting strategies: a comparative bibliometric analysis of TI, TMS, tDCS, and tFUS/TUS/LIFU}},
author = {Guodong Wang and Shuang Wu},
journal = {Frontiers in Neuroscience},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3389/fnins.2026.1922512},
url = {https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2026.1922512/full},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Across established non-invasive neuromodulation and emerging deep-targeting strategies: a comparative bibliometric analysis of TI, TMS, tDCS, and tFUS/TUS/LIFU
AU - Guodong Wang
AU - Shuang Wu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
JO - Frontiers in Neuroscience
DO - 10.3389/fnins.2026.1922512
UR - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2026.1922512/full
AB - Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) is expanding from conventional cortical modulation toward approaches capable of engaging deeper brain targets, but the literature structures of major modalities have rarely been compared within a common framework. We conducted a comparative bibliometric mapping review of temporal interference stimulation (TI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and transcranial focused ultrasound and related low-intensity ultrasound stimulation (tFUS/TUS/LIFU), using Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus records indexed from January 2017 to June 2026. After deduplication, relevance screening, targeted re-auditing, and corpus quality control, 32,017 records were retained (162 TI, 20,179 TMS, 10,576 tDCS, and 1,100 tFUS/TUS/LIFU). A strict ultrasound-neuromodulation core set ( n = 843) was used for modality-specific comparisons, giving a comparative dataset of 31,760 records. TI had the fastest relative growth from 2017 to 2025 (CAGR 64.6%) but the smallest absolute increase. In 10,000 size- and year-matched resamples, TI showed lower author-keyword Shannon diversity and higher Top-10 keyword concentration than matched TMS, tDCS, and tFUS/TUS/LIFU samples after joint Benjamini–Hochberg correction. The thematic pattern was also preserved when comparator corpora were expanded after record-level adjudication, when inclusion was restricted to title-defined records, and when the historical title-term procedure was applied to the contemporary datasets. The six thematic comparisons also remained significant under two-sided empirical testing. In contrast, when each modality was aligned to its own first 9 years, early TMS and tDCS were more thematically concentrated than TI, whereas early tFUS was less concentrated; this pattern persisted after broadening the historical tFUS corpus. Recent TI research activity also includes direct human deep-target validation and patient studies, alongside several registered clinical trials. These developments indicate translational activity beyond modeling and early proof-of-concept work. Together, these findings do not support a simple monotonic relationship between field age and thematic concentration across NIBS modalities, indicating that contemporary thematic concentration should not be interpreted as a direct proxy for bibliometric maturity.
SN - 1662-453X
SN - 1662-4548
ER -