New Delhi: Magic mushrooms, or “shrooms” may have finally proven their ‘magical’ capacities. A recent study found that it can alter the anatomy of an individual’s brain. And a single 25 mg dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is enough to do the trick.
These effects were found to be positive. “Increases in cognitive flexibility, psychological insight, and well-being are seen at one-month,” the study said.
Published on 5 May in Nature Communications, the study was led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Imperial College London. Conducted among 28 people who had never taken the psychedelic compound before, it found that psilocybin not only changed the brain’s structure, but in healthy volunteers, those changes seemed to persist even a month later.
If these findings are confirmed, they will help explain how psychedelics often have positive effects on people with anxiety, depression, and addiction, according to the researchers.
“We don’t yet know what these changes mean, but we do note that overall, people showed positive psychological changes in this study, including improved wellbeing and mental flexibility,” UCSF professor Robin Carhart-Harris, a neurologist and senior author on the study, told the Guardian. “It’s remarkable to see potential anatomical brain changes one month after a single dose of any drug.”
This study brings a fresh perspective at a time when scientific research is already looking at how psychedelics can be therapeutic. However, scientists remain divided about the issue. Some of the early studies about the effect of psychedelics were criticised for having small sample sizes and for being conducted in a manner where participants often knew whether they had received the drug or a placebo.
A recent trial showed that psychedelics could be used to treat mental health disorders since they allow the human brain to become more ‘flexible’–instead of the usual neural pathways and thinking processes, the brain may help an individual think differently in the long run. However, as research into psychedelics reached the public, psilocybin rose in popularity and experts warned that consuming the drug outside clinical environments could be dangerous. They said it could lead to anxiety, trauma, insomnia and have other such negative impacts.
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Rewired after one trip?
For the study, researchers recruited 28 healthy adults who had never used psychedelics before. First participants were given a 1 mg dose of psilocybin, an amount similar to a placebo. A month later, the same participants were given a 25 mg dose. The participants were told that they would be given psilocybin both times, but they were not informed about the dosage to avoid any expectation bias.
“All, except one, of the participants (94%) rated the 25 mg experience as the ‘single most unusual state of consciousness’ of their entire life,” the study said, adding that for the remaining participant it was in the “top 5”.
Electroencephalograms (EEGs) then recorded their brain activity during the dosing session, an hour later, two hours later, and four-and-a-half hours later. The neural pathways and brain structure of the participants was also measured using MRI, fMRI, and DTI scans before the dosage and a month later.
Researchers found that the participants’ brain activity became more ‘flexible’. While neural networks in the brain are often compartmentalised for specific functions, the psychedelic can temporarily disrupt networks linked to depression or anxiety and allow the individual to think and behave in a new way. Participants of the study highlighted better well-being and a positive mood after the high dose session.
An hour after the high psilocybin dose, EEGs pointed to high brain entropy–a state where the brain was processing more complex neural signals and a more diverse set of information.
However, Professor Alex Kwan, a neuroscientist at Cornell University in New York told the Guardian that while research in mice has shown that psychedelics can ‘rewire’ neural networks, it is yet to be confirmed whether the effect is similar in humans. He said that the results of the recent study may seem “exciting” but the research involved very few people and more comprehensive scans would be necessary to analyse brain connections in a deeper manner.