Information from the abstract
Robotic technologies are increasingly used in rehabilitation, therapeutic care, and neurosurgical treatment for neurodegenerative disorders, but the evidence captured by broad database searches spans different diseases, robot types, settings, and outcome frameworks. This review mapped the knowledge structure and temporal development of robot-assisted treatment research in selected neurodegenerative disorders represented by a prespecified multi-database search strategy. Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, and PubMed were searched and exported on 31 August 2026 for Articles and Reviews published from 2016 through 2025, with no language restriction. The date-restricted search yielded 1,874 records; after deduplication and publication-type filtering, 806 records underwent title/abstract screening. Fifty-four eligibility-unresolved records were then independently reassessed at full text by two reviewers and discordant judgments were adjudicated. Thirty-eight of these 54 records were added, producing a final corpus of 160 publications. NMF was used as the primary topic model and LDA as an algorithmic sensitivity analysis; annual topic shares, publication type, source venues, and affiliation geography were also examined. The revised corpus comprised 109 Articles and 51 Reviews across 121 journals. Annual output ranged from eight publications in 2016 to 24 in 2020 and 23 in 2025. NMF identified three clinically recognizable publication clusters: motor, gait, and limb rehabilitation (T1, n = 63; 39.4%); cognitive, social, and therapeutic care (T2, n = 65; 40.6%); and robot-assisted deep brain stimulation and neurosurgery (T3, n = 32; 20.0%). K = 3 remained stable across repeated fits and 80% subsampling. Across five LDA runs, correspondence with NMF was moderate (mean ARI = 0.691, SD = 0.220; mean NMI = 0.708, SD = 0.142). Full- and fractional-count country rankings were highly concordant (Spearman ρ = 0.937). Complete annual estimates showed changing relative representation across all three clusters rather than a uniform monotonic trend. The literature captured by the specified search strategy is organized into three publication clusters corresponding broadly to motor rehabilitation, cognitive and relational care, and precision neurosurgical intervention. These clusters quantify how clinically recognizable pathways co-occur in the literature; they do not establish comparative treatment effectiveness. The proposed future priorities are interpretive implications informed by topic structure, temporal patterns, and representative studies rather than direct outputs of the topic model.
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Related topics: Stroke Rehabilitation and Recovery · Prosthetics and Rehabilitation Robotics · scientometrics and bibliometrics research
Thai researcher and institutional participation
Xi Ling · Hang Yin · Silpakorn University · Chonburi Hospital
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