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A study has found one single dose of magic mushrooms can transform the brain physically – with changes lasting as long as a month.
The study, published in Nature Communications, aimed to identify the exact changes the brain undergoes after being exposed to psilocybin – the psychedelic substance in magic mushrooms.
Researchers hoped their findings would support calls for the drug to be used in therapeutic settings to treat anxiety, depression and addiction.
Initially, the 28 participants – who had no history of mental illness – were given a placebo and monitored for a month.
During that month, scientists measured psychological insight, well-being, and cognitive performance, while using fMRI imaging to observe connections in the brain.
In the second stage of the experiment, the participants were given 25mg of psilocybin – enough for a psychedelic experience, or ‘trip’.
Their brains were monitored during the trip and for the weeks after.
Within an hour of taking the dose, researchers observed a rise in brain entropy – the term used to describe intense neural activity, characterised as complex, unpredictable and flexible.
This means the brain was capable of understanding and processing more information than usual. And that wasn’t just in the short term.
One month after the trip, the participants’ brains showed denser neural tracts with greater integrity – the opposite of what can be observed in an ageing brain.
“Psilocybin seems to loosen up stereotyped patterns of brain activity and give people the ability to revise entrenched patterns of thought,” said Taylor Lyons, PhD, a research associate at Imperial College London and the first author of the paper.
The ability to break thought patterns is why researchers believe it has a place in a therapeutic setting.
Participants were also asked to respond to statements like “I’ve been feeling optimistic about the future” and “I’ve been dealing with problems well,” to determine their mental state two and four weeks after the dose.
Researchers noted a marked improvement in this responses at both the 2nd and 4th week after the trip.
They were also asked to take part in a cognitive flexibility test before and after the dose – which measures the ability to adapt thinking and respond to changing information.
All participants performed better on the test after taking magic mushrooms.
The researchers also found that those who experienced the greatest increase in brain entropy – and therefore those who most likely had the most intense ‘trip’ – showed a greater improvement in wellbeing and cognitive ability.
“We already knew psilocybin could be helpful for treating mental illness. But now we have a much better understanding of how,” said senior author Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD.
