# State of Neuroscience

_Tracking major trends in neuroscience_

Published: 2025-11-01

Live project: [Project website](https://stateofneuroscience.thetransmitter.org/)

This visual puts 50 years of neuroscience research on the map — by analyzing nearly 350’000 research publications and extracting salient keywords. Based on this, we were able to map the semantic concept space of neuroscience research: how are topic related to each other — and where is the current focus of attention?

## Key visuals

- State of Neuroscience 2025 hero on a topographic backdrop with Track major trends in neuroscience headline and key-finding sparklines
- Streamgraph closeup of shifting neuroscience term frequencies, blue older terms below and red recent terms like neuroinflammation and fMRI on top
- Sortable table of top neuroscience terms with publication counts, five-year change and trend sparklines, led by hippocampus at 18,915 publications

As the data‑visualization designer on the neuroscience mapping project, I led the transformation of 350,000 journal abstracts into an exploratory, term‑level landscape that invites discovery and surfaces meaningful patterns.

![State of Neuroscience 2025 landing page with key-finding sparklines: Alzheimer's disease at 6.2% of 2024 abstracts, EEG rising, COVID-19 newest]()

This includes, for instance, shaping the core presentation model (semantic map based on keyword co-occurrence) to balance overview and detail.

I also defined the visual language, based on input from project art director Rebecca Horne — a key visual idea being the use of topographic hills and valleys which remind of cortical structures with "activation overlays" for trending areas.

![Semantic trend map placing 500 neuroscience terms by co-occurrence, with heat overlay marking recently trending areas like EEG and neuroinflammation]()

Collaboration with research leads was essential to turn the myriad of theoretical possibilities into interpretable visuals, without sacrificing scientific soundness and precision.

![Trend analysis page ranking most used, top trending and newest neuroscience terms above a streamgraph and sortable full-term table]()

I also enjoyed producing the site fully myself, using [d3.js](https://d3js.org/), [svelteplot](https://svelteplot.dev/) and [svelte-kit](https://kit.svelte.dev/). The whole site runs as a static application, with pre-computed data files for performance and ease of hosting.

## Credits

In collaboration with [The Transmitter](https://thetransmitter.org/) (Kristin Ozelli, Emily Singer, Rebecca Horne, Hope Vanderberg) and [World Wide Neuro](https://world-wide.org/neuro) (Panos Bozelos, Tim Vogels). Funded by [Simons Foundation](https://www.simonsfoundation.org/).

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[View on truth-and-beauty.net](https://truth-and-beauty.net/projects/state-of-neuroscience)