Kristen Matheson spent a summer in Wiertelak's lab extracting various psychoactive substances from a group of plants sometimes used for pain and anxiety relief in traditional China.

 

AROMATHERAPY AND BALLROOM DANCING

Lavender, perhaps the queen of aromatherapy. It is widely believed to be soothing and good for pain relief, but there was virtually no scientific literature on the subject 10 years ago when Professor Eric Wiertelak, director of Macalester’s cognitive and neuroscience studies program, and his students began some small aromatherapy studies with the herb.

“When we applied the methods of the neuroscience lab, the results were in opposition to the anecdotal evidence,” says Wiertelak. “And when we looked at other substances, we found some similar paradoxes.” It inspired an exciting new direction for Wiertelak’s research.

Recently, under the auspices of a three-year National Institutes for Health grant from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Wiertelak and approximately 20 students have investigated plants that are used to alleviate pain and suffering. The research has a dual focus: extracting and investigating the impact on pain of substances derived from plants, and developing new models to measure the effect on pain.

Last summer, senior Kristen Mathson and recent graduate Nate Vernon spent the summer grinding up plant material, distilling it, and testing it through gas chromatography to identify the active ingredients. The extraction method was developed in collaboration with chemistry professor Ron Brisbois and his students. Mathson has been using an elevated plus-maze to test the effects of plant substances on anxiety in rats.

As for the new models, “there are cultural determinates to the alleviation of suffering,” says Wiertelak. “[Western] models for testing pain relievers standardize that on the basis of ‘How does this compare to an opiate?’ There are at least 100 plants in folk medicine systems around the world, what other countries would call simply ‘medicine,’ that are used to alleviate pain and suffering—but are typically not responsive in Western models of pain. In Beijing they are extremely excited about coming up with alternative models that are sensitive to the impact of plants formulas.”

Wiertelak has been working with Chinese researchers and U.S. agencies to facilitate collaborative research between U.S. and Chinese colleagues. During Macalester’s 2006 Faculty Development International Seminar in China, he enjoyed a personal visit to the Chinese institutes that are the national research, teaching, and health care centers for traditional medicines, acupuncture and moxibustion—the burning of plant material for its counterirritant effect.

Within the last year, Wiertelak has garnered three national honors recognizing his research and his outstanding contributions to neuroscience education. “On the national front and among our peer institutions, Macalester is seen as the compelling model for undergraduate cognitive and neuroscience studies,” says Wiertelak. But he is equally concerned about broad scientific literacy and addresses that, in part, through greater collaboration across disciplines. “In the behavioral neuroscience class we did an entire laboratory on how motor systems work within the nervous system by having the students learn a specific set of sequences in …ballroom dance.”