Study Reveals Psilocybin Works By Temporarily Scrambling Our Brain

A new study reports that magic mushrooms cause their renowned psychedelic effects by temporarily scrambling a brain network that plays a role in introspective thinking, such as daydreaming and memory. 

FMRI brain scans of people who took psilocybin (the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms) revealed that the substance causes profound and wide-reaching temporary changes to the brain’s default mode network (DMN). 

An Explanation for the Trippy Effects of Psilocybin

These findings offer a fascinating explanation for the trippy, mind-bending effects of psilocybin, and could lay the foundations for a better understanding of how the substance could be used to treat mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety, the researchers said. 

“There’s a massive effect initially, and when it’s gone, a pinpoint effect remains,” explained co-senior study author Dr. Nico Dosenbach, and professor of neurology with the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “That’s exactly what you’d want to see for a potential medicine.”

In a university news release, Dosenbach added;

“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.”

Great Leaps in Psychedelic Research

In their background notes the study authors explained that in the 1950s and 1960s scientists were deep in pioneering research into psilocybin as a treatment for depression. However this research was halted by the federal government’s designation of the substance as an illegal drug in the late 60’s. 

Luckily, as you may know, research into psychedelics has been resuscitated in recent years, leading to various great leaps including the decriminalization of psilocybin in US states such as Oregon and Colorado, and legalization (for medical prescription) in Australia, among others. 

Lead researcher Dr. Joshua Siegel, an instructor in psychiatry with the Washington University School of Medicine, said:

 “These days, we know a lot about the psychological effects and the molecular/cellular effects of psilocybin… But we don’t know much about what happens at the level that connects the two — the level of functional brain networks.”

How The Study Worked

To unravel this mystery, the researchers recruited seven healthy adult volunteers to take a high dose of psilocybin or methylphenidate (generic Ritalin), under controlled conditions. A pair of trained experts stayed with each participant throughout the experience, to head off any negative experiences. They helped to prepare the participants for what they would likely experience, provided guidance and support during each session, and worked with the volunteers to process and digest the experience after the fact.

Every participant had an average of 18 functional MRI brain scans in the days and weeks before, during, and up to three weeks after their psilocybin experiences. Four of the participants returned six months later to do the whole experiment again!

Study Reveals Psilocybin Works By Temporarily Scrambling Our Brain

The researchers found that psilocybin caused the brain’s default mode network to de-synchronise causing profound and widespread — though not permanent — changes. Basically, everything is temporarily ’scrambled’, into a sort of chaos (but a good chaos!) After falling out of sync, the brain network re-established itself when the immediate effects of the psilocybin wore off, but small differences from the pre-psilocybin scans remained for weeks afterwards. (The DMN remained stable in those who took the generic Ritalin.)

“The idea is that you’re taking this system that’s fundamental to the brain’s ability to think about the self in relation to the world, and you’re totally desynchronizing it temporarily,” Siegel said. “In the short term, this creates a psychedelic experience. The longer-term consequence is that it makes the brain more flexible and potentially more able to come into a healthier state.”

Why We Lose Our ‘Sense of Self’ on Shrooms

Each individual’s functional brain network tends to be one-of-a-kind, like a fingerprint. However, psilocybin distorted these networks so completely that people couldn’t be identified through their scans until the acute effects of the drug wore off, the researchers wrote. 

“The brains of people on psilocybin look more similar to each other than to their untripping selves,” Dosenbach said. “Their individuality is temporarily wiped out. This verifies, at a neuroscientific level, what people say about losing their sense of self during a trip.”

The magnitude of the changes to the brain networks correlated with the intensity of experience each person reported from their individual psilocybin trips, the researchers added. 

Shake It To Wake It…

From this study we can understand that psilocybin works by effectively ‘scrambling’ our brains, just for a little while, causing the trippy experience we know and love. What is fascinating, is that it seems that this scrambling, or de-synchronisation, means that our brains come back better and stronger, with psilocybin shown to improve the brain’s neuroplasticity, i.e the brain’s ability to form new connections and adapt. This is key for those who suffer from mental health conditions, in which negative habits and thought patterns become entrenched in the brain, like a ravine that cannot be climbed out of. 

In some ways, this makes rather poetic sense; we shake up an etch-a-sketch to draw a fresh, and better, picture. You can scramble radio waves and signals to create new channels, just like our brains. Once the visuals, and the warm fuzzies, and the glow have wound down, we are left with a refreshed slate. Sometimes you have to shake yourself, to wake yourself.

So next time someone warns you magic mushrooms will ‘scramble’ your brain, you’ll know what to say!

Study Reveals Psilocybin Works By Temporarily Scrambling Our Brain: Key Takeaways

• Psilocybin causes its psychedelic effects by scrambling a key brain network (the DMN). 
• Brain scans have shown that when under the influence of psilocybin, people’s functional brain networks become unrecognizable due to the level of de-synchronisation.
• Most effects diminish with the end of the psychedelic experience, however some small differences persist for weeks.
• These findings further support psilocybin as an exciting potential treatment for conditions such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD.