Mapping the Research Landscape and Global Trends: A Bibliometric Analysis of Event-related Potential in Alzheimer's Disease.

Abstract

Introduction: There is an urgent need for objective biomarkers to facilitate early diagnosis and dynamic monitoring of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Event-Related Potential (ERP), as a neuroelectrophysiological technique with high temporal resolution, shows great promise in addressing this demand. However, the macro-level developmental trajectory, research status, and frontier directions within this field remain to be systematically elucidated. This study employs bibliometric methods to delineate the development trends, knowledge structures, and research frontiers of ERP applications in AD, thereby offering a novel perspective for early diagnosis, dynamic monitoring, and efficacy assessment.

Method: Publications related to ERP and AD were retrieved and screened from the Web of Science Core Collection. A comprehensive quantitative and visual analysis was conducted using Microsoft Excel, CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and the bibliometrix package in R. The analysis covered publication trends, national/institutional collaboration networks, author co-occurrence, core journals, reference and keyword co-occurrence, and clustering.

Results: The number of annual publications in this field continued to grow. The United States, China, and Italy were the most productive countries, whereas the cooperation network among institutions and authors was decentralized. Keyword clustering identified six major research topics: P300/N200, Mismatch Negativity (MMN), N170, N400, Olfactory Event-Related Potential (OERP), and Electroencephalography (EEG).

Discussion: An analysis of the global research landscape reveals that ERP research has developed from an exploratory tool in the field of AD to an active research field of neuroscience. Journal and citation analysis indicate that the field has distinct clinical problem-driven features; keyword cluster analysis revealed six major themes corresponding to classical cognitive assessment, early sensory memory, and social cognition. Thematic analysis revealed that MMN and other ERP components that are sensitive to early abnormalities may become future research hotspots; however, the overall cooperation in this field still shows a certain degree of geographical concentration and institutional dispersion. In the future, it is necessary to build a closer international and interdisciplinary cooperation network, establish a standardized ERP evaluation scheme, and embed it throughout the entire process of early identification, staging, and monitoring of the effect of intervention in AD.

Conclusion: This research systematically presents the current state of research, hotspots, and evolutionary trends in ERP in the field of AD. The results suggest that in the future, a closer international and interdisciplinary cooperation network and further prospective clinical validation are needed to clarify the diagnostic performance and practical application value of ERP, thereby promoting its clinical application.