Blocking one receptor switched the whole experience off
What they did
Healthy volunteers took psilocybin after being pretreated with either a serotonin 5-HT2A blocker, a mixed blocker, or a dopamine blocker, to see which one would prevent the effects.
What they found
The perceptual and thought changes were blocked dose-dependently by the serotonin blockers but not by the dopamine blocker, giving the first human evidence that these effects run through the 5-HT2A receptor.
Worth knowing
Framed at the time as a model of psychosis, which is a lens the field has largely moved away from. The receptor finding has held up.
Vollenweider et al. Psilocybin induces schizophrenia-like psychosis in humans via a serotonin-2 agonist action. Neuroreport, 1998.
Read the sourceKeep reading
brain networksPsilocybin disrupted brain communication far more than a stimulantbrain networksBrains became less compartmentalised, and moods lifted with themdefault mode networkActivity went down, not upThis is where the word neuroplasticity comes from in psilocybin marketing. Worth reading the actual studies, because most of them were done in mice.
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