Researchers may be inching closer to explaining what's happening in the brain during—and after—a psychedelic trip. A small study in Nature Communications found that a single high dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, was linked to subtle structural changes in brain wiring that appeared to grow with the intensity of the trip, reports NBC News. Twenty-eight adults in London who'd never used psilocybin before first received a tiny, non-trippy dose, then a month later a standard 25mg therapeutic dose, with brain activity tracked via EEG and specialized MRI scans for weeks.
One key finding: Participants who reported stronger psychedelic experiences and greater psychological "insights" also showed larger shifts in how water moves along neural fibers connecting brain regions involved in emotion and impulse control. Senior author Robin Carhart-Harris says the changes made brain tracts appear denser—essentially the opposite of what's seen in some neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's—though experts stress the results are exploratory and not clearly "good" or "bad."
About 70% of participants did report feeling better in the weeks after the therapeutic dose. The work feeds into a growing push, backed by federal fast-tracking of psilocybin studies, to understand why psychedelics can produce benefits that outlast the drug's presence in the body. "We already knew psilocybin could be helpful for treating mental illness," Carhart-Harris says, per a ScienceAlert. "But now we have a much better understanding of how."
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