Brains became less compartmentalised, and moods lifted with them
What they did
Two depression trials scanned patients before and after psilocybin therapy, one open-label in treatment-resistant depression and one randomised comparison against escitalopram.
What they found
Brain network modularity dropped after psilocybin, meaning separate networks became more globally integrated, and the size of that change tracked symptom improvement. Escitalopram produced no comparable network change.
Worth knowing
A correlation between two measurements in the same people is not proof that one caused the other. One of the two trials had no control group.
Daws et al. Increased global integration in the brain after psilocybin therapy for depression. Nature Medicine, 2022.
Read the sourceKeep reading
brain networksPsilocybin disrupted brain communication far more than a stimulantdefault mode networkActivity went down, not upreceptorsBlocking one receptor switched the whole experience offThis 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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