Discover - This is your brain on psychedelic drugs
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Business Insider - How tripping on mushrooms changes the brain
Researchers gave subjcts 2 mg of psilocybin (the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms") intravenously and then measured their brain activity (using fMRI), specifically using a new method that tries to find connections between different areas of the brain. The subjects who took the dose had a sort-of stimulative effect in their brains compared to the placebo, where connections (albeit mostly fleeting ones) between usually unconnected parts of the brain were formed. The surprise was that all the new connections weren't fleeting: some novel pathways remained well after the effects of the dose wore off. The findings help explain behavior during psychedelic experiences. This may further the theory that mushrooms are good for depression. It was thought that portions of the brain that correlate to sense of self became muted, now it may be instead that those portions connect to a wider context to alleviate obsessive, solipsistic thoughts.
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