{"id":260073,"date":"2017-10-14T17:50:13","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T21:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=260073"},"modified":"2020-12-18T15:35:19","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T20:35:19","slug":"magic-mushrooms-can-reset-depressed-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/magic-mushrooms-can-reset-depressed-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Magic mushrooms can \u2018reset\u2019 depressed brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5><span style=\"color: #008080;\"><strong>RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n<h5><span style=\"color: #008080;\"><strong>Elohim created plants and mushrooms on Earth to fix almost every possible disease.<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>A hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms can &#8220;reset&#8221; the brains of people with untreatable depression, raising hopes of a future treatment, scans suggest.<\/p>\n<p>The small study gave 19 patients a single dose of the psychedelic ingredient psilocybin.<\/p>\n<p>Half of patients ceased to be depressed and experienced changes in their brain activity that lasted about five weeks.<\/p>\n<p>However, the team at Imperial College London says people should not self-medicate.<\/p>\n<p>There has been a series of small studies suggesting psilocybin could have a role in depression by acting as a\u00a0&#8220;lubricant for the mind&#8221;\u00a0that allows people to escape a cycle of depressive symptoms.<\/p>\n<p>But the precise impact it might be having on brain activity was not known.<\/p>\n<p>The team at Imperial performed fMRI brain scans before treatment with psilocybin and then the day after (when the patients were &#8220;sober&#8221; again).<\/p>\n<p>The study,\u00a0published in the journal Scientific Reports, showed psilocybin affected two key areas of the brain.<\/p>\n<p>The amygdala &#8211; which is heavily involved in how we process emotions such as fear and anxiety &#8211; became less active. The greater the reduction, the greater the improvement in reported symptoms.<br \/>\nThe default-mode network &#8211; a collaboration of different brain regions &#8211; became more stable after taking psilocybin.<br \/>\nDr Robin Carhart-Harris, head of psychedelic research at Imperial, said the depressed brain was being &#8220;clammed up&#8221; and the psychedelic experience &#8220;reset&#8221; it.<\/p>\n<p>He told the BBC News website: &#8220;Patients were very ready to use this analogy. Without any priming they would say, &#8216;I&#8217;ve been reset, reborn, rebooted&#8217;, and one patient said his brain had been defragged and cleaned up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>However, this remains a small study and had no &#8220;control&#8221; group of healthy people with whom to compare the brain scans.<\/p>\n<p>Further, larger studies are still needed before psilocybin could be accepted as a treatment for depression.<\/p>\n<p>However, there is no doubt new approaches to treatment are desperately needed.<\/p>\n<p>Depression: A revolution in treatment?<br \/>\nProf Mitul Mehta, from the Institute of Psychiatry at King&#8217;s College London, said: &#8220;What is impressive about these preliminary findings is that brain changes occurred in the networks we know are involved in depression, after just a single dose of psilocybin.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This provides a clear rationale to now look at the longer-term mechanisms in controlled studies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/health-41608984\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/health-41608984<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RAEL\u2019S COMMENT: Elohim created plants and mushrooms on Earth to fix almost every possible disease. &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":287423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}