.
"No, no, no - He's outside, looking in..."
(From a Moody Blues song. I forget which one.)
Posted on 12/28/2022 2:20:31 PM PST by BenLurkin
One of the hottest tickets at this year's Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego was a session on psychedelic drugs.
About 1,000 brain scientists squeezed into an auditorium at the San Diego Convention Center for the symposium, called Psychedelics and Neural Plasticity.
They'd come to hear talks on how drugs like psilocybin and MDMA can alter individual brain cells, can help rewire the brain, and may offer a new way to treat disorders ranging from depression to chronic pain.
"I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people," says Alex Kwan, a biomedical engineer at Cornell University who spoke at the session.
"In the last couple of years there has been a lot of public excitement about psychedelics," Kwan says. "The scientists are catching on now that we just don't know much about what these compounds do."
So during the session, Kwan and several other researchers shared what they are learning about the drugs.
Rewiring the brain Kwan described his own work on how psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, seems to help the brain rewire by generating new connections between neurons.
A study of mice found that psilocybin altered dendrites, the branch-like structures that extend from a nerve cell and receive input from other cells.
Dendrites form connections through small protrusions known as dendritic spines. And in mice that got psilocybin, the size and number of these spines increased by about 10%, which allowed cells to form new connections.
"When we give mice a single dose of psilocybin, we can see those new connections form within a day," Kwan says. "And then they can last more than a month," which is the equivalent of many months in a human.
New connections are a critical part of the rewiring process known as brain plasticity, which allows the brain to learn and adapt.
"Psychedelics seem to elevate plasticity," Kwan says.
One-and-done treatment?
Brain plasticity may explain why a single dose of a psychedelic drug can have a long-lasting impact on disorders like anxiety, depression and PTSD.
"It can be months or years," says Dr. Gitte Knudsen a neurologist from University of Copenhagen in Denmark who spoke at the psychedelics session. "It's a stunning effect."
These long-term effects have been shown with drugs including psilocybin, LSD and DMT (ayahuasca), Knudsen says. In contrast, most existing psychiatric drugs need to be taken every day.
But psychedelic drugs have some drawbacks. They can cause nausea or produce hallucinations that are frightening or unpleasant.
"It can be a quite overwhelming experience to people," Knudsen says. "And for that reason, you need to prepare them for that, and you also need to be with them while they are in the experience."
Even when patients are well prepared for a session, Knudsen says, they may have mixed feelings afterward.
"When people have been through a psychedelic experience in my lab, they say, 'Wow this was amazing, this was just a fantastic experience,'" she says. "And you ask them, 'Well, would you like to come back next week for another session?' They say, 'Thank you, but no thank you.' "
Psychedelics in the mainstream The fact that psychedelics were featured at the world's largest meeting of brain scientists suggests the drugs are poised to enter the scientific mainstream. That's a recent development.
Psychedelic research was popular in the 1950s but pretty much ended after the mid-1960s when the drugs were made illegal in the U.S. and Europe.
In the 1990s, a few researchers began cautiously studying how drugs like LSD, MDMA and psilocybin might help with psychiatric conditions like depression and PTSD.
And in 2016, a pair of studies published by prominent researchers "really piqued everyone's interest," says Dr. Joshua Gordon, who directs the National Institute of Mental Health.
Both studies found that a single treatment with psilocybin reduced anxiety and depression in cancer patients.
That has led to some large studies of psychedelics, including one published in The New England Journal of Medicine in November showing that psilocybin helped people with major depression who hadn't been helped by other treatments.
Studies like that one suggest that psychedelics "are going to be beneficial and useful" in treating psychiatric disorders, Gordon says.
But the effects found in large studies of psychedelics have been much less dramatic than in some of the earlier, smaller studies, Gordon says. Also, he says, some companies hoping to market psychedelics have overstated their benefits.
Screw the scientific method...let's parteeee!
I will say that shrooms/lsd do rewire your brain.
Tune in turn on drop out and he did.
.
"No, no, no - He's outside, looking in..."
(From a Moody Blues song. I forget which one.)
most young people have no first-hand knowledge of the damage done by psychedelics.
bet this is not NPR’s first puff piece for the drugs, as I monitor BBC and ABC Australia and both regularly advocate for mainstreaming psychedelics, especially ABC, where it is something of an obsession.
reminds me of WEF’s Yuval Harari who says workers won’t be needed in the future, and they’ll be kept happy (controlled) by drugs and video games.
here we go again....
Psychedelics elevate plasticity?
Think Dr. Leary said that too...
Bad trip, man, bummer, bummer...
That’s what they thought in the 50s.
“Fellow analysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, and laypeople. Today, I would like to discuss some of the lesser-known aspects of psychobiological therapy. One hundred years ago, psychology was akin to witchcraft. But some of these great people - these giants behind me - gave us... a nice living.”
High Anxiety
Next up :Blood letting returns.
“The bus came by and I got on
That’s when it all began’.’
Don’t forget the leeches.
Sounds like a hippy drug convention
Lasts 30 minutes? Just another rip off by big pharma.
Thanks to Norm.
You obviously have not met any folks working with these drugs. Mostly Conservative or Libertarian. There is a lot of solid research, especially for veterans with PTSD.
“Ketamine (”Special K”) has been successfully used to treat major depression for years.”
Therapeutic effect overstated and largely due to enthusiasm on the part of clinician-advocates. Also, at a practical level, costs are high ($400 minimum) and too many follow-up treatments required and too frequently. A long-lasting therapeutic effect is the exception, not the rule.
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