Magic Mushrooms And Mental Health: What Brain Scans Reveal

A new study indicates that psilocbin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, could prove quite instrumental in treating different kinds of mental disorders. However, the impact of this drug on brain function is still unknown. In this line, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis have conducted a study published in Nature where they undertook brain scans of seven healthy participants before, during, and after ingesting psilocbin.

In the study, every subject had 18 fMRI scans, showing that the links between different brain areas in the already established networks were impaired, while there was increased communication between the different brain networks. This would indicate that psilocybin makes the processing of information through the brain less predictable, creating a disordered state.

This is an exceptionally well-controlled study, and the authors are to be congratulated on the challenges of obtaining fMRI in psychedelic-intoxicated subjects. The use of an "active control" (a stimulant drug) adds further to the validity of the study. Enduring changes in the connectivity between the hippocampus (involved in short-term memory) and the default mode network (active when a person is resting) were seen after the psychedelic experience and could underpin the potential neuroplastic and therapeutic effects of psilocybin.

However, the sample size of the study was very small and only included healthy volunteers, so the overall generalisability of the results to patient populations in need of psilocybin-assisted therapy is questionable. There could also be the potential for "selection bias" in this study, and the double-blind procedure might be difficult to maintain due to the prominent effects of psilocybin.

Also, there were no long-term improvements reported in wellbeing that could be indicative of participants or the clinical relevance of psilocybin. There are some conflicts of interest in the authors—related to the commercialisation of neurotechnologies used—that have to be taken into consideration as a potential source of bias. Despite these limitations, the study contributes to the growing interest in psychedelic-assisted therapy in mental health treatment.