Depressive patients treated with hallucinogenic mushrooms show reduced symptoms of their disease and increased brain activity soon after the treatment is started, according to the results of a study published in the medical journal Nature.
Researchers at Imperial College London in the UK used psilocybin – the psychoactive compound found naturally in magic mushrooms – to treat a small number of patients suffering from depression in whom conventional treatment had failed.
20 patients with a form resistant to treatment received two doses of psilocybin (10 mg and 25 mg), the second dose one week after the first.
Nineteen of them underwent initial brain imaging and then a second scan one day after the high-dose treatment. Immediately after treatment with psilocybin, patients reported a decrease in depressive symptoms, characterized by improvements in mood and relief from stress.
The Beneficial Psilocybin Treatment Effects
The conclusions of their trials seem to provide evidence of the benefit of this type of treatment.
Indeed, comparing images of the patients’ brains before and after receiving the drug treatment revealed changes in brain activity that were associated with marked and lasting reductions in depressive symptoms.
Indeed, the researchers report benefits described by patients up to five weeks after treatment, and believe that the psychedelic compound may actually reset the activity of key brain circuits known to play a role in depression.
“We showed for the first time clear changes in brain activity in depressed people treated with psilocybin after failing to respond to conventional treatments,” says Robin Carhart-Harris, director of psychedelic research at Imperial College. .
The authors point out that the initial results of the experimental therapy are interesting, but they are limited by the small size of the sample, as well as the absence of a control group. New studies must be set up to confirm these preliminary results. They also insist that self-medication with hallucinogenic mushrooms is not recommended.
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