Can Mushroom Enhance Depressed Brain Functioning?

Treating depressed people with a magic mushroom compound may enhance their brain connectivity as per a study at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London published in the journal Nature Medicine. The study shows that a magic/psychedelic compound — Psilocybin — present in the mushrooms helps to “open up” depressed people’s brains, even after use, enabling brain regions to talk more freely to one another.

The Magic Mushroom Compound

Psilocybin is one of the psychedelics that is explored as a potential therapy for psychiatric disorders. Various studies have revealed promising results of the drug in treating depression and anxiety.

However, conventional antidepressant (escitalopram) failed to show similar changes in brain connectivity. This suggests that the psychedelic works differently to treat depression.

“These findings are important because for the first time we find that psilocybin works differently from conventional antidepressants – making the brain more flexible and fluid, and less entrenched in the negative thinking patterns associated with depression. This supports our initial predictions and confirms psilocybin could be a real alternative approach to depression treatments,” says Professor David Nutt, Head of the Imperial Centre for Psychedelic Research.

“One exciting implication of our findings is that we have discovered a fundamental mechanism via which psychedelic therapy works not just for depression – but other mental illnesses, such as anorexia or addiction. We now need to test if this is the case, and if it is, then we have found something important,” says the paper’s senior author Professor Robin Carhart-Harris, former Head of the Imperial Centre for Psychedelic Research, who is now based at University of California, San Francisco.

Source-Medindia