'Magic mushroom' compound creates a hyper-connected brain to treat depression

By Nicoletta Lanese published about 6 hours ago

Psychedelic helped people with depression break out of rigid, negative patterns of thinking.



(Image credit: KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY vis Getty Images)

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.

"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.

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