How Psilocybin May Rewire the Brain

“One of the most interesting things we’ve learned about the classic psychedelics is that they have a dramatic effect on the way brain systems synchronize, or move and groove together,” said Matthew Johnson, a professor in psychedelics and consciousness at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“When someone’s on psilocybin, we see an overall increase in connectivity between areas of the brain that don’t normally communicate well,” Johnson said. “You also see the opposite of that – local networks in the brain that normally interact with each other quite a bit suddenly communicate less.”

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More Psilocybin Research

Studies over the past several years have shown promise in using psilocybin-assisted therapy to treat psychiatric disorders like depression.

A recent follow-up study by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers found two doses of the hallucinogenic compound coupled with psychotherapy resulted in large decreases in major depressive disorder symptoms for most of the study’s participants.

New research is hinting at how the hallucinogenic compound may facilitate reduced depression symptoms.

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Researching Psychedelics- It's Complicated

Researchers from SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University and McGill University published a paper in the journal Science Advances proposing a unique method for better understanding the interaction between hallucinogenic drugs, people’s brains, and different types of psychedelic experiences.

They did this by using artificial intelligence to look at real-life accounts of psychedelic experiences and compare them to how human brain chemistry engages with drugs on a molecular level.

However, while the researchers’ methods and goals push the envelope forward on understanding how psychedelics can help or harm individuals, the data they use could be unreliable.

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