New Research: Redefining Brain Circuits Under the Influence of Magic Mushrooms

Research on the components of psychoactive substances can create new pathways in therapeutic methods, but scientists still have limited knowledge, and the relative dangers of using these substances, even therapeutically, remain unknown. A group of researchers has shown that certain compounds found in a type of psychoactive containing psilocybin can temporarily rearrange and reset brain neural networks, but there is still a long way to understand how these substances work. The story of psychoactive substances has an astonishing history. Although various tribes and rituals have empirically used these substances for centuries around the world, scientific research on them is relatively recent and has been accompanied by many ups and downs, fueling numerous myths and rumors. Psychoactive substances are sometimes classified based on their effects on individuals into two groups: psychostimulants (substances that increase awareness and sensory perception, such as some psychoactive mushrooms) and psychoinhibitors (substances that reduce awareness and connection with the environment and decrease sensory perception, such as opiates derived from plants). These substances gained particular attention in the United States during the 1960s, but the prevalence of their use, especially among groups dissatisfied with government policies, quickly made the research in this area a victim of what became known as the War on Drugs, initiated by Nixon and peaked during Reagan's presidency, especially under the leadership of his wife, Nancy Reagan. Now, after years, academic research in this area has accelerated again; research that, due to the potential discovery of the effects and functions of these substances and the possibility of using them in controlled conditions for certain diseases, may be effective, while at the same time, given the rampant use of these substances among youth, which comes with extremely high and sometimes life-threatening risks, has become more necessary than ever. We still do not precisely know what happens in our brains when using these substances that leads to the results individuals experience. The market for rumors is very hot in this regard, and even in some cases, different methods of using these substances are recommended that have been scientifically shown to be ineffective and even pose serious risks in their use. One example of this is the small-scale use of these psychoactive substances, known as microdosing, which, contrary to public advertising, research shows that there is no significant therapeutic difference between users of this method and those who do not use it, beyond the placebo effect. Accordingly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently rejected a request for approval to use a limited dose of these substances for alleviating certain anxieties in specific diseases due to a lack of sufficient scientific evidence and signs indicating the absence of side effects. However, away from the noise of pseudo-scientific, superstitious, and cult-like discussions surrounding these substances, the world of science is striving to uncover the secrets of these substances. This process is slow, amid pressures from some traditional research and pharmaceutical institutions, and the concern that excessive and pleasure-seeking personal use without supervision may lead to incidents that could once again hinder scientific research as it did in the 1960s and 70s. A new study whose results were published in the journal Nature has attempted to identify some functions of the psilocybin compound, which is a hallucinogenic and psychoactive agent found in a family of mushrooms commonly known as magic mushrooms. According to the results of this research, this compound can temporarily reset the entire network of brain neurons responsible for managing the perception of time and what we recognize as ourselves. If this finding is repeated and confirmed in subsequent experiments, it could pave the way for the medicinal use of this compound for certain specific neurological conditions. This experiment was conducted at this stage on only seven volunteers under the supervision of researchers. This small number of test subjects is considered one of the weaknesses of the research, but it is a necessary step to ensure the safety of the test and based on that, it can be repeated for a larger test group. The project researchers stated that by examining the behavior of some test subjects who were given a high dose of this compound, they observed that different pathways of neural connections in their brains were temporarily created, completely different from the pathways that define a person's self-perception and could somehow create the illusion of another person's perception for the individual. One neuroscientist from Harvard Medical School says this is one of the strongest examples of such an effect observed so far. Although this result could provide hope for correcting some neurological damage, it also brings concerns. For instance, although a significant portion of the brain function of these individuals returned to normal within a few hours, some effects were observable in the brain for weeks. Medical science is trying to find new ways to treat certain diseases, including anxieties, by carefully and step-by-step examining these effects. In this path, the hedonistic and unsupervised use of these substances in society or promoting them at this stage as alternative treatments could be seriously dangerous for individuals who use them and could also pose a serious obstacle to scientific research.