How Psychedelics Affect the Brain

Psychedelics like psilocybin are starting to enter the conversation as potential treatments for brain and mental health disorders.

 

Ongoing experimental research is exploring how psychedelics like psilocybin affect the brain and how they could serve as a potential treatment for brain and mental health disorders. Based on a recent study, a controlled dose of psilocybin may have therapeutic effects for relieving mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

 

What Are Psychedelics?

 

Psychedelics are hallucinogenic drugs that affect a person’s mental state and can temporarily change their perceptions, sensory experiences, mood, and thought processes. There are different types of psychedelics, including psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ibogaine, and mescaline. People who consume psilocybin-containing mushrooms can have surreal, mind-altering experiences.

While researchers are looking at how psychedelics affect the brain, they strongly caution against self-medicating outside of the supervision of trained mental health experts. Psychedelics affect each individual differently. Because there is a risk of adverse effects, like having a negative or frightening experience while on the drug, it’s important to take psilocybin under controlled conditions.

 

How Do Psychedelics Impact the Brain?

 

Psychedelics work by disrupting the communication between networks within the brain. Some interfere with specific brain chemicals or neurotransmitters that control different functions. 

In a recent study, scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe the changes in a person’s brain activity before, during, and after a controlled dose of psilocybin. They found that psilocybin caused significant, widespread changes in the brain’s functional connectivity, a measure of how separate regions of the brain interact and exchange information. The changes were more than three times greater than those of the control compound. 

Psilocybin also caused brain activity to become less synchronized and led to less distinction between brain networks. Relatively stable areas of the brain were temporarily “scrambled” while taking psilocybin.

The largest changes happened in the brain’s default mode network. The default mode network relates to internal thoughts and a person’s sense of time, space, and the self. It is most active when performing passive tasks like daydreaming or mind-wandering, rather than focusing attention on external tasks. 

Study participants completed questionnaires that rated their feelings of transcendence, connectedness, and awe while using psilocybin. These reports showed the greater the functional connectivity changes, the more intense the person’s psychedelic experience.

 

Potential Therapeutic Effects of Psilocybin

 

The therapeutic effects of psilocybin appear to last long after the drug wears off and brain activity returns to “normal.” While most brain networks returned to normal within days of taking psilocybin, the reduction in functional connectivity between the default mode network and the hippocampus lasted for at least three weeks. 

These small, persistent changes to the brain circuits may mean the drug has a longer-lasting effect on a person’s perception of self in relation to the world. It could help the brain adapt to become more flexible and potentially reorganize into a healthier state.

This research offers important information about the potential use of psilocybin for therapeutic treatment. “There’s a massive effect initially, and when it’s gone, a pinpoint effect remains,” said co-senior author Nico U. F. Dosenbach, MD, PhD, a professor of neurology. “That’s exactly what you’d want to see for a potential medicine. You wouldn’t want people’s brain networks to be obliterated for days, but you also wouldn’t want everything to snap back to the way it was immediately. You want an effect that lasts long enough to make a difference.”

 

Research on the Therapeutic Effects

 

In previous decades, federal drug policy restricted research that involves psychedelics, but regulations have since loosened, sparking a growing interest in this field. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted two breakthrough therapy designations for psilocybin, a process that expedites the development and review of promising drugs for serious conditions.

While this recent study shows that psychedelics may benefit people with brain or mental health disorders, it also proves that this type of research can be conducted in a safe, scientifically rigorous way and serves as guidance for future studies.

Ongoing developments will help us gain greater insight into how psychedelics work and their effects on brain function. For example, a new tool provides a rapid, noninvasive way to measure how psychedelics affect brain activity and track the processes that produce their beneficial effects.

We need more research to better understand how psychedelics affect the brain, their therapeutic effects, and potential treatment use. While it may seem odd now, this could be exactly the type of treatment that helps millions of people in the future.