‘Magic mushroom’ compound creates a hyper-connected brain to treat depression
Psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in “magic mushrooms,” could treat depression by creating a hyper-connected brain.
By boosting connectivity between different areas of the brain, the psychedelic may help people with depression break out of rigid, negative patterns of thinking, a new study suggests.
Recent clinical trials have suggested that psilocybin may be an effective treatment for depression, when carefully administered under the supervision of mental health professionals. In the new study, published Monday (April 11) in the journal Nature Medicine (opens in new tab), researchers probed exactly how the psychedelic works to improve peoples’ depressive symptoms. To do so, the team collected brain scans from about 60 patients who had participated in clinical trials for psilocybin therapy; these brain scans revealed distinct changes in the patients’ brain wiring that emerged after they took the drug.
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“We see connectivity between various brain systems increasing dramatically,” first author Richard Daws, who was a doctoral student at Imperial College London at the time of the study, told Live Science. Healthy individuals with high levels of well-being and cognitive function tend to have highly connected brains, studies suggest, but in people with depression, “we sort of see the opposite of that — a brain characterized by segregation,” said Daws, now a postdoctoral research associate at King’s College London. This sort of organization undermines the brain’s ability to dynamically switch between different mental states and patterns of thinking, he said.
The study supports the idea that psilocybin relieves depressive symptoms, at least in part, by boosting connectivity between different brain networks, said Dr. Hewa Artin, the chief resident of outpatient psychiatry at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. That said, “additional studies will be needed to replicate results and validate findings,” Artin told Live Science in an email.
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Promising results
The new study included 59 people, 16 of whom participated in one clinical trial for psilocybin and 43 who participated in another.
The first trial included people with treatment-resistant depression, meaning the participants had tried various antidepressants in the past without experiencing improvement. In the trial, these patients initially received a 10-milligram dose of psilocybin, and then seven days later, they received an additional 25-milligram dose. The participants were carefully monitored during each treatment session and spoke with psychotherapists afterward, to reflect on their experiences.
To see how the patients’ brains changed after treatment, the researchers used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures changes in blood flow to different parts of the brain. The movement of oxygenated blood through the brain reflects which regions of the organ are active through time. The participants underwent fMRI scans prior to the start of therapy and then one day after their 25-milligram dose; and their depressive symptoms were also assessed before and after treatment.
The fMRI scans showed that the patients’ brain networks became less siloed and more integrated with one another following the treatment, as evidenced by the dynamic flow of blood between them. These changes correlated with long-term improvements in the patients’ depressive symptoms.
The second trial differed from the first in that it was a “randomized controlled trial,” considered the gold-standard form of clinical trial. The participants were randomly assigned to receive either psilocybin or the conventional antidepressant escitalopram (Lexapro); neither the participants nor researchers knew which medication was given to which participant.
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The psilocybin group received two 25-milligram doses of the psychedelic, spaced three weeks apart, and also took sugar pills throughout the trial. The escitalopram group received two 1-milligram doses of psilocybin, also spaced three weeks apart, and took daily escitalopram pills throughout the trial.
The 1-milligram doses of psilocybin would not be expected to have any appreciable psychedelic effect, so they served as a placebo, senior author Robin Carhart-Harris, who was the head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London at the time of the study, told Live Science. It would usually take a dose three to five times that amount to generate an effect, said Carhart-Harris, who is now director of the Psychedelics Division within Neuroscape, the University of California, San Francisco’s translational neuroscience center.
The escitalopram group showed no significant changes…
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