{"id":96464,"date":"2024-07-17T16:11:08","date_gmt":"2024-07-17T16:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/17\/psilocybin-temporarily-dissolves-brain-networks\/"},"modified":"2024-07-17T16:11:08","modified_gmt":"2024-07-17T16:11:08","slug":"psilocybin-temporarily-dissolves-brain-networks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/17\/psilocybin-temporarily-dissolves-brain-networks\/","title":{"rendered":"Psilocybin temporarily dissolves brain networks"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div> \r\n<br><div style=\"clear:both\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.subscribe-cta {\n  color: black;\n  margin-top: 0px;\n  background-color: #D5DDEE;\n  background-size: cover;\n  padding: 20px;\n  border: 1px solid black;\n  border-top: 5px solid black;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n.centered {\n  text-align:center;\n  margin:auto;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n<!-- \/wp:html -->\n\n<!-- wp:group {\"className\":\"subscribe-cta\"} -->\n<div id=\"subscribeConversion\" class=\"wp-block-group subscribe-cta\"><!-- wp:heading {\"textAlign\":\"center\",\"style\":{\"typography\":{\"fontSize\":\"2em\"}}} -->\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:2em\">Take our AI Survey<\/h2>\n<!-- \/wp:heading -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph {\"align\":\"center\",\"style\":{\"typography\":{\"fontSize\":\"1.1em\"}}} -->\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:1.1em\"><em>Science News <\/em>has partnered with <a href=\"https:\/\/trustingnews.org\/about-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trusting News<\/a> to gather feedback on the potential use of AI in journalism. <strong>Currently, we do not publish any content produced by generative AI<\/strong> (see our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/about-science-news\/journalism-standards-practices#ai-policy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">policy<\/a>). We do want to hear your views on how <em>Science News<\/em> could use AI responsibly.  Let us know by participating in a short 10 question survey.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:spacer {\"height\":\"20px\"} -->\n\n<!-- \/wp:spacer -->\n\n<!-- wp:buttons {\"className\":\"centered\",\"layout\":{\"type\":\"flex\",\"justifyContent\":\"center\"}} -->\n\n<!-- \/wp:buttons --><\/div>\n<!-- \/wp:group -->\n\n\n<p>The brain scanning protocol researchers used was intense. \u201cWe had a small number of people, just seven participants in the whole study, but an enormous amount of data on each one,\u201d says Joshua Siegel, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Each person underwent about 18 functional MRI brain scans, one roughly every other day, over the course of the study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That repeated scanning gives \u201can unprecedented view on how brain connectivity evolves after a dose of psilocybin,\u201d says Alex Kwan, a neuroscientist at Cornell University who wasn\u2019t involved in the study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the first part of the experiment, Siegel and colleagues recorded each person\u2019s baseline brain activity, the unique patterns that emerge much like a fingerprint\u2019s whorls, loops and arches when a person simply rests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Later in the study, researchers gave participants 25 milligrams of psilocybin, a key ingredient in some hallucinogenic mushrooms, and watched what happened in the scanner. On a different day, for comparison, each participant also got a dose of methylphenidate, the generic form of Ritalin, a stimulant that affects the brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The effects of psilocybin were obvious, and big. \u201cPsilocybin had humongous acute effects on the human brain,\u201d says Nico Dosenbach, a neuroscientist also at Washington University School of Medicine. \u201cWay, way, way bigger than the active control,\u201d the methylphenidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of the biggest changes were in a brain system known as the default mode network, or DMN. This coordinated group of brain regions is active when nothing particular is happening. Scientists think that the DMN has a role in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/you-are-who-you-are-default\">creating our sense of self<\/a> (<em>SN: 7\/3\/09<\/em>). \u201cIt\u2019s multiple parts of the brain across both hemispheres, but they\u2019re all activating and deactivating in a very organized, synchronous way,\u201d Siegel says. \u201cAnd with psilocybin, it essentially becomes chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><span class=\"caption wp-caption-3141546\">A person\u2019s brain activity creates a somewhat steady neural pattern with small blips of variation (left, green and yellow). After a dose of psilocybin (center), researchers found big changes in neural activity (red). Afterward, the brain settled back into its normal activity pattern (right). <\/span><span class=\"credit wp-credit-3141546\">Sara Moser\/Washington University<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Dosenbach can attest that the drug causes a loss of sense of self. Along with being a researcher on the study, he was one of the seven study participants, giving him an unusual perspective on psilocybin\u2019s effects on the brain. \u201cYou read about it, and you think about it and then you experience it, and you\u2019re like, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s even more real.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Signs of those experiences showed up in the MRI scans. The team saw that psilocybin seemed to wipe clean the participants\u2019 neural fingerprints. Dosenbach has an analogy to explain the brain changes in the scans: \u201cYou\u2019d be like, \u2018That is my face, and that is your face.\u2019 And then you took a medicine, and we both had a puppy face \u2014 very similar, but very different from our normal faces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A day after taking the drug, most of psilocybin\u2019s brain changes were gone, Siegel says. But one change persisted for three weeks. There was diminished coordination between the DMN and a part of the hippocampus, a structure involved in memory. Researchers don\u2019t yet know how long this change might last, how it affects the brain overall or if it could hint at psilocybin\u2019s therapeutic effects. It was not present in data from four of the participants who came in for scans six to 12 months later, but the study didn\u2019t have enough data to say with certainty that it was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The findings add to earlier work that sought to understand how psychedelic drugs change brains and show that the effects are far from simple. \u201cPsilocybin is not simply tuning brain activity up or down,\u201d Kwan says. \u201cThe results paint a more complex and nuanced picture for how psychedelics change neural activity dynamics than previously thought.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Recent studies point to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/psychedelic-drugs-treatment-mental-health-disorders-depression\">promise of psychedelic drugs<\/a> as therapies for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and more (<em>SN: 12\/3\/21<\/em>). Understanding how these drugs affect the brain in the hours, days and months after taking it may lead to better treatments for some of these disorders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/psilocybin-brain-networks\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Take our AI Survey Science News has partnered with Trusting News to gather feedback on the potential use of AI in journalism. Currently, we do not publish any content produced by generative AI (see our policy). We do want to hear your views on how Science News could use AI responsibly. Let us know by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/071624_ls_brain-psilocybin_inline.jpg?resize=680%2C185&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[1920,52988,14950,81805,20790],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96466,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96464\/revisions\/96466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}