Abstract
The functional neuroimaging literature has become increasingly complex and thus difficult to navigate. This complexity arises in part from the rate at which new studies are published, but also from the heterogenous terminology that varies widely from study-to-study and even more so from discipline-to-discipline. Therefore, it is important to clearly identify the primary research domains of neuroimaging and their most commonly reported brain regions. To do so we analyze the multivariate semantic structure of abstracts in Neurosynth and found that there are six primary domains of the functional neuroimaging literature each with their own preferred reported brain regions. Furthermore these domains appear to be influenced by time (because of, e.g., changes in terminology, “popularity” of domains). Finally we note that our techniques and results form the basis of a “recommendation engine” that could help navigate the neuroimaging literature.
