Daily Archives: February 20, 2023

A compound found in so-called magic mushrooms, psilocybin produces visual and auditory hallucinations and profound changes in consciousness over a few hours after ingestion. In 2016, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers first reported that treatment with psilocybin under psychologically supported conditions significantly relieved existential anxiety and depression in people with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis.

Now, the findings from the new study, published Nov. 4 in JAMA Psychiatry, suggest that psilocybin may be effective in the much wider population of patients who suffer from major depression than previously appreciated.

The magnitude of the effect we saw was about four times larger than what clinical trials have shown for traditional antidepressants on the market, says Alan Davis, Ph.D., adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Because most other depression treatments take weeks or months to work and may have undesirable effects, this could be a game changer if these findings hold up in future gold-standard placebo-controlled clinical trials. The published findings cover only a four-week follow-up in 24 participants, all of whom underwent two five-hour psilocybin sessions under the direction of the researchers.

Because there are several types of major depressive disorders that may result in variation in how people respond to treatment, I was surprised that most of our study participants found the psilocybin treatment to be effective, says Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., the Oliver Lee McCabe III Professor in the Neuropsychopharmacology of Consciousness at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. He says the major depression treated in the new study may have been different than the reactive form of depression in patients they studied in the 2016 cancer trial. Griffiths says his team was encouraged by public health officials to explore psilocybins effects in the broader population of those with major depressive disorder because of the much larger potential public health impact.

For the new study, the researchers recruited 24 people with a long-term documented history of depression, most of whom experienced persisting symptoms for approximately two years before enrolling in the study. The average age of participants was 39; 16 were women; and 22 identified themselves as white, one person identified as Asian and one person identified as African American. Participants had to taper off any antidepressants prior to the study with the help of their personal physician to ensure safe exposure to this experimental treatment.

Thirteen participants received the psilocybin treatment immediately after recruitment and after preparation sessions, and 11 participants received the same preparation and treatment after an eight-week delay.

Treatment consisted of two psilocybin doses given by two clinical monitors who provided guidance and reassurance. The doses were given two weeks apart between August 2017 and April 2019 at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center Behavioral Biology Research Building. Each treatment session lasted approximately five hours, with the participant lying on a couch wearing eyeshades and headphones that played music, in the presence of the monitors.

All participants were given the GRID-Hamilton Depression Rating Scale a standard depression assessment tool upon enrollment, and at one and four weeks following completion of their treatment. On the scale, a score of 24 or more indicates severe depression, 1723 moderate depression, 816 mild depression and 7 or less no depression. At enrollment, participants had an average depression scale rating of 23, but one week and four weeks after treatment, they had an average depression scale score of 8. After treatment, most participants showed a substantial decrease in their symptoms, and almost half were in remission from depression at the follow-up. Participants in the delayed group didnt show decreases in their symptoms before receiving the psilocybin treatment.

For the entire group of 24 participants, 67% showed a more than 50% reduction in depression symptoms at the one-week follow-up and 71% at the four-week follow-up. Overall, four weeks post-treatment, 54% of participants were considered in remission meaning they no longer qualified as being depressed.

I believe this study to be a critically important proof of concept for the medical approval of psilocybin for treatment of depression, a condition I have personally struggled with for decades, says entrepreneur and philanthropist Tim Ferriss, who supported the funding campaign for this study. How do we explain the incredible magnitude and durability of effects? Treatment research with moderate to high doses of psychedelics may uncover entirely new paradigms for understanding and improving mood and mind. This is a taste of things to come from Johns Hopkins.

The researchers say they will follow the participants for a year after the study to see how long the antidepressant effects of the psilocybin treatment last, and will report their findings in a later publication.

Griffiths, whose research with psilocybin, begun in the early 2000s, was initially viewed by some with skepticism and concern, says he is gratified by Johns Hopkins support and heartened by the dozens of startups and research labs that have followed suit with their own research. He says numerous companies are now actively working to develop marketable forms of psilocybin and related psychedelic substances.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than 17 million people in the U.S. and 300 million people worldwide have experienced major depression.

Other authors on the study include Frederick Barrett, Darrick May, Mary Cosimano, Nathan Sepeda, Matthew Johnson and Patrick Finan, all of Johns Hopkins.

The study was supported by philanthropic donors The Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, Tim Ferriss, Matt Mullenweg, Craig Nerenberg,Blake Mycoskie and Dave Morin; as well as by grants from the Riverstyx Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (T32DA007209, R01DA003889, K23DA035915).

Conflicts of interest disclosed to JAMA Psychiatry include the following: Johnson serves as a consultant and/or advisory board member for AWAKN Life Sciences Inc., Beckley Psychedelics Ltd., Entheogen Biomedical Corp., Field Trip Psychedelics Inc., Mind Medicine, Inc., Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development & Commercialization, Inc. and Silo Pharma, Inc.

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Psychedelic Treatment with Psilocybin Relieves Major Depression, Study ...

The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research will focus on how psychedelics affect behavior, brain function, learning and memory, the brains biology and mood. Studies of psilocybin in patients will determine its effectiveness as a new therapy for opioid addiction, Alzheimer's disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (formerly known as chronic Lyme disease), anorexia nervosa and alcohol use in people with major depression. The researchers hope to create precision medicine treatments tailored to individual patients specific needs.

The centers establishment reflects a new era of research in therapeutics and the mind through studying this unique and remarkable class of pharmacological compounds, says Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., the centers director and professor of behavioral biology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.In addition to studies on new therapeutics, we plan to investigate creativity and well-being in healthy volunteers that we hope will open up new ways to support human thriving.

Johns Hopkins is deeply committed to exploring innovative treatments for our patients, says Paul B. Rothman, M.D., dean of the medical faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine. Our scientists have shown that psychedelics have real potential as medicine, and this new center will help us explore that potential.

The center will provide support for a team of six faculty neuroscientists, experimental psychologists and clinicians with expertise in psychedelic science, as well as five postdoctoral scientists.

I am thrilled about this magnificent opportunity that has been provided by enlightened private funders, says James Potash, M.D., M.P.H., the Henry Phipps Professor and director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. This center will allow our enormously talented faculty to focus extensively on psychedelic research, where their passions lie and where promising new horizons beckon.

The centers operational expenses for the first five years will be covered by private funding from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation and four philanthropists: Tim Ferriss (author and technology investor), Matt Mullenweg (co-founder of WordPress), Blake Mycoskie (founder of TOMS, a shoe and accessory brand) and Craig Nerenberg (investor).

We have to take braver and bolder steps if we want to help those suffering from chronic illness, addiction and mental health challenges, says Alex Cohen, president, Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation. By investing in the Johns Hopkins center, we are investing in the hope that researchers will keep proving the benefits of psychedelics and people will have new ways to heal.

The centers faculty will train graduate and medical students who want to pursue careers in psychedelic science, where there have historically been few avenues for career advancement.

This represents the largest investment to date in psychedelic research, as well as in training the next generation of psychedelic researchers, says Ferriss. I sincerely hope this ambitious Johns Hopkins center will inspire others to think big and establish more psychedelic research centers in the U.S. and overseas, as theres never been a better time to support such important work.

In 2000, the psychedelic research group at Johns Hopkins was the first to achieve regulatory approval in the U.S. to reinitiate research with psychedelics in healthy volunteers who had never used a psychedelic. Their 2006 publication on the safety and enduring positive effects of a single dose of psilocybin sparked a renewal of psychedelic research worldwide.

Since then, the researchers have published studies in more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles. Their research has demonstrated therapeutic benefits for people who suffer from conditions including nicotine addiction, and depression/anxiety caused by life-threatening diseases such as cancer. It has paved the way for current studies on treatment of major depressive disorder. They have also led the field by publishing safety guidelines that have helped gain approval for psychedelic studies at other universities around the world, and by developing new ways to measure mystical and emotionally challenging experiences while under the influence of psychedelics. Their research also explores the interaction of psilocybin and meditation.

The groups findings on both the promise and the risks of psilocybin helped create a path forward for its potential medical approval and reclassification from a Schedule I drug, the most restrictive federal government category, to a more appropriate level. Psilocybin was classified as Schedule I during the Nixon administration, but research over the last decade has shown psilocybin to have low toxicity and abuse potential.

This very substantial level of funding should enable a quantum leap in psychedelic-focused research, adds Potash. It will accelerate the process of sorting out what works and what doesnt.

The Centers Staff Members:

Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., initiated the psilocybin research program at Johns Hopkins almost 20 years ago, leading the first studies investigating the effects of its use by healthy volunteers. His pioneering work led to the consideration of psilocybin as a therapy for serious health conditions. Griffiths recruited and trained the center faculty in psychedelic research as well.

Matthew Johnson, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science, has expertise in drug addictions and behavioral economic decision-making, and has conducted psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins since 2004 (with well over 100 publications). He led studies showing psilocybin can treat nicotine addiction. Johnson will lead two new clinical trials and will be associate director of the new center.

Frederick Barrett, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, has expertise in cognitive and affective (study of emotions) neuroscience, as well as psychological assessment. The focus of his past and ongoing research is the impact of psychedelics on emotional and brain functioning. Barrett will be the centers director of neurophysiological mechanism and biomarker assessment, overseeing a project that looks at how psychedelics change brain function and blood biomarkers that may predict response to psychedelics.

Albert Garcia-Romeu, Ph.D., is an instructor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences with expertise in assessing the psychological and subjective effects of psychedelics, and in addiction treatment with psychedelics. At the new center, Garcia-Romeu will lead several clinical trials and will supervise key elements of participant recruitment and care.

Natalie Gukasyan, M.D., is a Johns Hopkins trained psychiatrist and a study team member for the ongoing psilocybin depression study. Gukasyan will lead the study on psilocybin treatment for anorexia nervosa and serve as the new centers medical director.

Alan Davis, Ph.D., a part-time adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, is one of the lead psilocybin session therapists on the ongoing psilocybin depression study and lead investigator of several past and ongoing survey studies exploring the effects of psychedelics in real-world and clinical settings. At the new center, he will provide clinical supervision and consultation across clinical trials.

Mary Cosimano, M.S.W., has been a member of the Johns Hopkins psychedelic research team since its inception and has served as a study guide for hundreds of psychedelic sessions. Cosimano will be the director of clinical services for the new center, with responsibility for training and supervising center staff members who prepare, support and provide after care for study participants.

William Richards, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist who conducted research with psychedelics in the 1960s. He has been a member of the Johns Hopkins psychedelic research team since its inception.

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Johns Hopkins Launches Center For Psychedelic Research

A report on the new study was published on Feb. 15, 2022 in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Our findings add to evidence that, under carefully controlled conditions, this is a promising therapeutic approach that can lead to significant and durable improvements in depression, says Natalie Gukasyan, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She cautions, however, that the results we see are in a research setting and require quite a lot of preparation and structured support from trained clinicians and therapists, and people should not attempt to try it on their own.

Over the last 20 years, there has been a growing of research with classic psychedelics the pharmacological class of compounds that include psilocybin, an ingredient found in so-called magic mushrooms. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, psilocybin can produce perceptual changes, altering a persons awareness of their surroundings and of their thoughts and feelings. Treatment with psilocybin has shown promise in research settings for treating a range of mental health disorders and addictions.

For this study, the researchers recruited 27 participants with a long-term history of depression, most of whom had been experiencing depressive symptoms for approximately two years before recruitment. The average age of participants was 40, 19 were women, and 25 identified as white, one as African American and one as Asian. Eighty-eight percent of the participants had previously been treated with standard antidepressant medications, and 58% reported using antidepressants in their current depressive episodes.

After screening, participants were randomized into one of two groups in which they received the intervention either immediately, or after an eight-week waiting period. At the time of treatment, all participants were provided with six to eight hours of preparatory meetings with two treatment facilitators. Following preparation, participants received two doses of psilocybin, given approximately two weeks apart between August 2017 and April 2019 at the Behavioral Biology Research Center at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Participants returned for follow-up one day and one week after each session, and then at one, three, six and 12 months following the second session; 24 participants completed both psilocybin sessions and all follow-up assessment visits.

The researchers reported that psilocybin treatment in both groups produced large decreases in depression, and that depression severity remained low one, three, six and 12 months after treatment. Depressive symptoms were measured before and after treatment using the GRID-Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, a standard depression assessment tool, in which a score of 24 or more indicates severe depression, 1723 moderate depression, 816 mild depression and 7 or less no depression. For most participants, scores for the overall treatment decreased from 22.8 at pretreatment to 8.7 at one week, 8.9 at four weeks, 9.3 at three months, 7 at six months and 7.7 at 12 months after treatment. Participants had stable rates of response to the treatment and remission of symptoms throughout the follow-up period, with 75% response and 58% remission at 12 months.Psilocybin not only produces significant and immediate effects, it also has a long duration, which suggests that it may be a uniquely useful new treatment for depression, says Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., the Oliver Lee McCabe III, Ph.D., Professor in the Neuropsychopharmacology of Consciousness at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. Compared to standard antidepressants, which must be taken for long stretches of time, psilocybin has the potential to enduringly relieve the symptoms of depression with one or two treatments.

The researchers emphasize that further research is needed to explore the possibility that the efficacy of psilocybin treatment may be substantially longer than 12 months. Johns Hopkins is one of the sites of a national multisite randomized, placebo-controlled trial of psilocybin for major depressive disorder.

Other researchers who contributed to the study are Alan Davis, Frederick Barrett, Mary Cosimano, Nathan Sepeda and Matthew Johnson from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The study was funded in part by a crowd-sourced campaign organized by Tim Ferriss and by grants from the Riverstyx Foundation and Dave Morin. Support for Alan Davis and Natalie Gukasyan was provided by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (T32DA07209, National Institute on Drug Abuse). Support for authors was also provided by the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, which is funded by the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, Tim Ferriss, Matt Mullenweg, Craig Nerenberg and Blake Mycoskie. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, or in decision to publish or manuscript preparation.

COI: Alan Davis is a board member of Source Research Foundation. Matthew Johnson has received grant support from the Heffter Research Institute that is unrelated to this study, and he is an advisor to the following companies: AJNA Labs, AWAKN Life Sciences, Beckley Psytech, Entheon Biomedical, Field Trip Psychedelics, Mind Medicine, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development & Commercialization and Silo Pharma. Roland Griffiths is a board member of the Heffter Research Institute and has received grant support from the institute unrelated to this study. Griffiths is site principal investigator, and Johnson and Gukasyan are co-investigators for a multisite trial of psilocybin-assisted therapy for major depressive disorder sponsored by Usona Institute.

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Psilocybin Treatment for Major Depression Effective for Up to a Year ...

Recently listening to Henryk Goreckis Symphony No. 3 brought Rob Jacobs back to a life-changing experience that happened a decade ago. After ingesting a psychedelic drug as part of a formal study at Johns Hopkins, he was lying on a couch at the research center, wearing eyeshades and feeling a deep emotional connection to the music playing through his headphones.

It was unbelievably beautiful. It literally moved me to tears, Jacobs, now 52, wrote in his post-session report in 2010. It seemed to capture the human condition, the beauty and sadness of existence. Melancholy but majestic. It was like I could see right into the heart of the matter with crystal clarity.

Jacobs remembers all these feelings, which came on as he began experiencing the effects of psilocybin the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms.

Goreckis 27-minute composition, also known as Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, is one of a collection of mostly classical pieces that help unlock elevated states of consciousness for study participants at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. The seven-hour and 40-minute playlist, developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins, seeks to express the sweeping arc of the typical medium- or high-dose psilocybin session. (There is extra time built into the playlist, as session length can vary.)

This playlist supported the psychedelic experiences of those who participated in a new study published Nov. 4 in JAMA Psychiatry that found that psilocybin may show promise as a treatment for adults with major depression. A version of the playlist is available on Spotify.

The research center, which launched in September 2019, is believed to be the first such center in the country and the largest of its kind in the world. Its research focuses on how psychedelics can impact brain function and mood in healthy individuals and in patient populations, including conditions such as tobacco addiction and anorexia nervosa as well as anxiety and depression in people with life-threatening cancer.

The 2010 study Jacobs participated in examined the impact of psilocybin on spiritual practices in Jacobs case, meditation.

Psychologist Bill Richards, whose involvement in psychedelic research dates back to 1963, masterminded the playlist. As a researcher at the center, he emphasizes that the music is chosen for its ability to guide and support the participants experience.

Were exploring the human psyche, which might take you through some painful things in childhood. It may take you into some archetypal or visionary realms that you never knew were possible. It might take you beyond usual consciousness into a realm that feels eternal, says Richards.

Psilocybin researchers at NYU Langone Health and the Usona Institute in Madison, Wisconsin, have since adapted the playlist for their own research.

Richards reasoning for choosing classical music, as well as the structure of the Johns Hopkins playlist, inspired Usonas playlist, which uses seven pieces from the Hopkins list. Usona added Spanish guitar, non-Western classical music and modern works with some classical structure.

We were striving to create a blend of resonance with the music and emotional/psychological challenge that are thought to be beneficial, says Malynn Utzinger, co-founder and director of integrative medicine at Usona. We paid attention to the structure and tone of each section of the Hopkins list, and while we did not use quite as much strictly classical music, we wanted to create a list with a relatively high amount of structured music versus ambient.

The Birth of a Playlist

The playlist, which Johns Hopkins has used since it began its psychedelic research 20 years ago, dates back to 1967. At the time, Richards was involved in similar research at the Spring Grove Hospital Center in Catonsville, which is now part of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. There, he and other researchers investigated LSD, psilocybin and other psychedelics for treating substance use disorder, depression and the psychological distress associated with terminal cancer. The drugs were also studied for their effects on the professional lives of religious and mental health professionals.

We were working with 33 RPMs and turntables, and always trying to decide what record to play next, Richards recalls. We developed a certain intuitive list of favorites that just seemed to work well with a lot of people. Peoples experiences were going deeper and deeper, becoming very profound.

The late music therapist Helen Bonny, who also worked at the center, devised a number of cassette tape playlists with names such as peak experience for her doctoral thesis. When Richards joined center Director Roland Griffiths to initiate psilocybin research at Johns Hopkins in 1999, he created a formal playlist that drew partly from Bonnys tapes as well as from music he had used. His son Brian, who worked at the Johns Hopkins center as a postdoctoral research fellow, contributed in particular to what Richards calls the welcome back to Earth music.

The playlist is divided into segments: background music that plays as the participant arrives for his or her session; music that plays when the drug is starting to take effect, at which point he or she is lying down and wearing eyeshades and headphones; the ascent; the peak; the post-peak; and the welcome back music. There are usually two researchers in the room, referred to as guides, who simultaneously listen to the playlist through speakers.

The music in each section is deliberately chosen to accompany a particular part of the psychedelic journey. For example, Richards finds that Samuel Barbers iconic Adagio for Strings works well as participants approach the peak, when the effects of the psilocybin are steadily intensifying.

The music chromatically develops, and it goes up and reaches this exquisite climax and then comes back down, he says.

For the onset of the drug, on the other hand, he thinks the best music is unfolding and has a dependable structure.

Its going somewhere, its picking you up and carrying you. Its got some force, some substance, he says. It doesnt have very unpredictable changes of rhythm or something thats going to startle or frighten you. So, its a net of reassurance, almost, and of leadership.

The music helps keep participants from prematurely returning to normal conscious awareness, Richards says.

I think of it as a nonverbal support system, sort of like the net for a trapeze artist, he says. If all is going well, youre not even aware that the net is there you dont even hear the music but if you start getting anxious, or if you need it, its immediately there to provide structure.

The majority of the music is either instrumental or choral with non-English text, and purposefully so. In order to keep participants inside the experience, only the last section of the playlist uses selections with recognizable words.

Its the structure, the harmonic design, the richness, the unfolding, the harmonies, the dissonance, that really matters, he says. If youre truly trying to shift consciousness beyond the level of the everyday self, you have to get beyond language.

Jacobs, an adjunct instructor in English and literature at the Community College of Baltimore County and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Johns Hopkins University, wasnt familiar with most of the music he heard during his sessions. Because of that, he felt that it didnt preload any experience and was more supportive than directive.

At the end of his session, however, he was glad to hear the familiar tune of the Beatles Here Comes the Sun, which Richards considers part of the welcome back to Earth music. (The song was included on previous versions of the current playlist, which can vary slightly between studies. For the JAMA study, the second to last song is Louis Armstrongs What a Wonderful World.)

A decade later, former study participant Jacobs says his experience with psilocybin showed him that life is a fundamentally spiritual experience. It made him less frightened of death, more centered and more committed to a spiritual path.

That kind of revelation is something Richards has seen from the beginning. In the early days of his research, he recalls most participants with substance use disorder being unfamiliar with Brahms symphonies. After the sessions, they bought the music for themselves.

It spoke [to them]. It took on meaning in the struggle, the unfolding, the dissonance being resolved. They could understand that that type of classical music is a language about life and human experience. And when youre in the music, its so different from listening to the music.

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Inside the Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Playlist - Hopkins Medicine

Perhaps no region of the brain is more fittingly named than the claustrum, taken from the Latin word for hidden or shut away. The claustrum is an extremely thin sheet of neurons deep within the cortex, yet it reaches out to every other region of the brain. Its true purpose remains hidden away as well, with researchers speculating about many functions. For example, Francis Crick of DNA-discovery fame believed that the claustrum is the seat of consciousness, responsible for awareness and sense of self.

What is known is that this region contains a large number of receptors targeted by psychedelic drugs such as LSD or psilocybin the hallucinogenic chemical found in certain mushrooms. To see what happens in the claustrum when people are on psychedelics, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers compared the brain scans of people after they took psilocybin with their scans after taking a placebo.

Their findings were published online on May 23, 2020, in the journal NeuroImage.

The scans after psilocybin use showed that the claustrum was less active, meaning the area of the brain believed responsible for setting attention and switching tasks is turned down when on the drug. The researchers say that this ties in with what people report as typical effects of psychedelic drugs, including feelings of being connected to everything and reduced senses of self or ego.

Our findings move us one step closer to understanding mechanisms underlying how psilocybin works in the brain, says Frederick Barrett, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the schools Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. This will hopefully enable us to better understand why its an effective therapy for certain psychiatric disorders, which might help us tailor therapies to help people more.

Because of its deep-rooted location in the brain, the claustrum has been difficult to access and study. Last year, Barrett and his colleagues at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, developed a method to detect brain activity in the claustrum using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

For this new study, the researchers used fMRI with 15 people and observed the claustrum brain region after the participants took either psilocybin or a placebo. They found that psilocybin reduced neural activity in the claustrum by 15% to 30%. This lowered activity also appeared to be associated with stronger subjective effects of the drug, such as emotional and mystical experiences. The researchers also found that psilocybin changed the way that the claustrum communicated with brain regions involved in hearing, attention, decision-making and remembering.

With the highly detailed imaging of the claustrum provided by fMRI, the researchers next hope to look at the mysterious brain region in people with certain psychiatric disorders such as depression and substance use disorder. The goal of these experiments will be to see what roles, if any, the claustrum plays in these conditions. The researchers also plan to observe the claustrums activity when under the influence of other psychedelics, such as salvinorin A, a hallucinogen derived from a Mexican plant.

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Research Story Tip: Psychedelic Drug Psilocybin Tamps Down Brains Ego ...