Psilocybin, a substance found in psychedelic mushrooms, appears to benefit the brains of people with severe depression in ways that other antidepressants cannot, a study indicates.
The results are based on brain scans of 60 people and demonstrate the potential for the drug to treat depression in a unique way, the researchers say.
Professor David Nutt, lead author of the study and head of the Center for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, said the latest findings on psilocybin are “exciting” and “important”.
Under depression, the brain can get stuck in a particular negative way of thinking, he said, in a kind of addicted rut.
Psilocybin had the potential to “free up” people’s brains and make them “more flexible and fluid” for up to three weeks after ingesting the substance.
This was shown in the increased connections between brain regions when patients were examined. An improvement in the mood of these people was also detected months later.
Researchers caution, however, that patients with depression should not take psilocybin on their own.
Findings from previous studies already showed a reduction in depression symptoms with psilocybin therapy – but researchers weren’t sure how and why it worked.
Similar changes were not seen in the brains of people treated with a standard antidepressant.
A synthetic form of the drug is tested on people in tests under rigorous medical conditions, with expert psychological support provided before, during and after it is taken.
“This supports our initial predictions and confirms that psilocybin may be a real alternative approach to depression treatments,” Nutt said.
In recent years psychedelics are being studied to treat a number of mental health disorders.
brain activity
Psychedelics have the ability to affect all of a person’s senses, in addition to thinking, emotions, and timing.
While regular antidepressants are taken every day, psilocybin is only taken once or twice to produce the same effect – however, more research on more patients for longer is needed to confirm this.
The results, published in the publication Nature Medicine, came out of two studies. In the first, everyone was given psilocybin. In the second – a randomized controlled trial – some were given the drug while others were given a different antidepressant.
All participants also participated in psychotherapy sessions with mental health professionals. Brain scans were done before and then a day or three weeks after the appointment.
Professor Robin Carhart-Harris, senior author of the study, said: “We still don’t know how long the changes in brain activity seen with psilocybin therapy last and we need to do more research to understand this.”
“We know that some people relapse and it may be that after a while their brains go back to the rigid patterns of activity that we see in depression.”
Now they want to test their theory of changes in brain connectivity in other mental illnesses such as anorexia.
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