"Important discoveries often wait for you in the gaps between disciplines"

At first glance, the current interests of Rickard L Sjöberg might not strike you as being closely related to those that were the focus of his first research endeavors more than 25 years ago.  Currently, his group deals primarily with brain tumors, but his first scientific papers described a witch panic in the Swedish parish of Rättvik during the 1670s. This spring a book on investigative interviews with child witnesses was published, for which he was one of the editors, and he was recently featured in the podcasts Casefiles and P3 Dokumentär in episodes describing the “Kevin Hjalmarsson Case”. Even though he has been active in what can be defined as different academic disciplines, the distance between them might not be as large as one might think.

– All of my research has, of course, been characterized by similar principles of applying scientific methods. Another common theme has been a desire to gain deeper levels of understanding of brain function in a way that can be made immediately useful to people in need, says Rickard.

But the questions that have caught his interest have also often turned out to overlap with issues he has previously dealt with in more direct ways. One example is the link between investigative interviews with child witnesses and memory-related phenomena during awake craniotomies.

– Some may think that investigative interviews with children is a matter solely for the police, whereas memories elicited by electric brain stimulation may strike you as a purely neurosurgical question. But the scientific theories and cognitive processes relevant to the understanding of these different phenomena are surprisingly similar.

Source attribution theory as a common denominator

An important common denominator in his work on memories in different contexts is the ”source attribution theory” that was developed and refined by American researchers in the 1980s. The central claim of this theory is that memories are reconstructed at the time of retrieval and that this process also entails an attribution of the source of the memory based on its characteristics. This process is most often unconscious and automatic but may on certain occasions also involve conscious deliberations. If this process fails, a false memory may emerge.

– Source attribution theory has, or at least should have, a central role in the evaluation of children’s testimonies in forensic contexts. But it is also potentially important to neurosurgeons, for instance regarding the highly topical question whether it should be possible to treat Alzheimers with electric brain stimulation. Source attribution errors may also hamper neurosurgeons from learning from their own complications. I discuss both these latter issues in recent review articles.

Awake brain surgery and molecular processes: two current research topics

Rickard L Sjöberg is head of a research group that focuses on understanding brain function and how it can be protected in patients with brain tumors and other neurosurgical conditions. During the spring of 2023 neuropsychologist Mattias Stålnacke will defend a doctoral thesis describing psychological testing, quality of life and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies of patients Rickard has operated. Mattias and Rickard also collaborate clinically and one of Mattias’ responsibilities is to talk to and test patients during awake surgical procedures as Rickard operates.

– The main point of awake surgery is that we can map brain function and see effects of surgery on psychological abilities and processes in real time. Neurosurgeons are usually most weary of causing impairments of speech, but during awake procedures speech can be monitored throughout the procedure.

Another interest Rickard has brought into his research on the form of brain tumors known as gliomas is the role of molecular processes in brain function. Rickard Sjöberg also has a background in research on neurogenetic regulation on neurotransmission involving monoaminergic substances, such as serotonin. About 16 years ago, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Health in the United States, studying effects of gene by environment interactions on behavior in human and non-human primates. During the latest two years he has, in collaboration with Beatrice Melin, Benny Björkblom, Henrik Antti, Wendy Wu among others, at Umeå University, begun to apply these perspectives to the understanding of the development of malignant gliomas.

– Here at Umeå University, we have over many years built a biobank of brain tumor samples. New metabolomics data from this material suggests that degradation products of serotonin differ systematically between certain tumor subtypes. Another finding is that variation in the gene that codes for the enzyme that metabolizes serotonin and other similar substances appears to be related to the risk of developing the most malignant forms of glioma.

"The ultimate goal is always to help the individual patient”

This is another area where he has been able to integrate his current neurosurgical focus with his previous research interests. Many of his previous publications on neurogenetics and serotonergic metabolism have been published in psychiatric and pharmacological journals, but the most recent ones are classified as neuro-oncology by the academic systems.

– It’s all about developing an understanding of how the basic biochemical environment of the brain is regulated and what is affected by this regulation. In the end, the goal is to help the individual patient.

Rickard describes the desire to produce not just interesting but also useful research on brain function as something that has often made him cross the boundaries of different academic disciplines.

– The discoveries that in the end will prove important in the real world will often wait for you in the gaps between different disciplines.