Mapping the dementia research area at the micro-level using co-terms analysis and positioning for traditional herbal medicine.

OBJECTIVE: To identify the position of traditional herbal medicine in dementia research field using mapping technology.
METHODS: Keywords for dementia and traditional herbal medicine for treating dementia were used to extract scientific articles from the Web of Science database from January 2000 to July 2010. A co-occurrence matrix was created based on the concurrent set of author's keywords occurring in each scientific article, and technology network maps were created from similarity index matrices.
RESULTS: Twenty specialized research areas were identified in the dementia field, and the relationship strength was 0.2-0.6. Many research fields were associated with diagnosis and risk factors for dementia. Additionally, the mechanism or cause of dementia is an actively studied field. Traditional herbal medicine for treating dementia was located on a map near the cortical dementia diagnosis and therapy, and frontotemporal dementia research field with a relationship strength of 0.53 and 0.31-0.33 respectively, which demonstrates that traditional herbal medicine for dementia occupies an independent research area with a relationship to existing scientific research fields.
CONCLUSION: Traditional herbal medicine can provide an alternative and complementary approach for treating dementia as evidenced by a scientific mapping analysis.