Scientists at Imperial College London gave psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, to 20 patients who had depression that hadn’t been helped by other treatments. Patients first took a 10mg dose of psilocybin, then a 25mg dose the week after.
All the patients said they still felt better a week after treatment, and about half of them felt better five weeks later, too. These self-reports were confirmed by before-and-after brain scans. After the treatment, there was less blood flow in the part of the brain that is involved in emotion processing, called the amygdala.
Interestingly, scans of the brain while on drugs show a type of “disintegration” where there’s less connectivity between different parts. Researchers have suggested that this disintegration is responsible for why people report losing their sense of self or ego while on drugs. But the scans of the brain afterward found that there’s more connectivity and integration, suggesting that maybe psychedelics work by breaking down the old pattern and kickstarting the brain into a new one.
Magic mushrooms might help depression by resetting the brain (The Verge)
Psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression: fMRI-measured brain mechanisms (Nature)