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January 24th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda TUESDAY, Jan. 24 (HealthDay News) — Psychedelic mushrooms may
point to new ways to treat depression, suggest two small brain imaging
studies that seem to show how psilocybin — the active ingredient in such
mushrooms — affects the brain.
One study included 30 healthy people who had psilocybin inserted into
their blood while magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners measured
changes in their brain activity. The scans revealed that psilocybin caused
decreased activity in what the researchers described as the brain’s “hub”
regions — areas especially well-connected with other areas.
That study was published in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.
The second study included 10 healthy volunteers and found that
psilocybin boosted their recall of personal memories and their emotional
well-being for up to two weeks. The researchers said this suggests that
psilocybin might prove useful as an adjunct to psychotherapy. That study
will be published online Thursday in the British Journal of
Psychiatry.
A study published last year found that people with anxiety who received
a single psilocybin treatment had lower depression scores six months
later.
David Nutt, who’s with the Department of Medicine at Imperial College
London, was the senior author of both of the new studies.
“Psychedelics are thought of as ‘mind-expanding’ drugs, so it has
commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity, but
surprisingly, we found that psilocybin actually caused activity to
decrease in areas that have the densest connections with other areas,”
Nutt said in a college news release. “These hubs constrain our experience
of the world and keep it orderly. We now know that deactivating these
regions leads to a state in which the world is experienced as
strange.”
The impact of psilocybin reported by the study participants — such as
seeing “geometric” patterns, experiencing an altered sense of time and
space, and unusual physical sensations — correlated with a decreased flow
of oxygen and blood to parts in the brain’s posterior cingulate cortex and
medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the study authors said.
It’s thought that the posterior cingulate cortex plays a role in
consciousness and self-identity. Research has shown the medial prefrontal
cortex to be especially active in people struggling with depression, so
psilocybin’s effect on this area of the brain could be responsible for
some of the antidepressant effects reported in previous research, the
study authors said.
Nutt and his colleagues also found that psilocybin reduced blood flow
in the hypothalamus, where blood flow increases in people with cluster
headaches. Some headache sufferers have reported that psilocybin improved
their symptoms.
“Psilocybin was used extensively in psychotherapy in the 1950s, but the
biological rationale for its use has not been properly investigated until
now. Our findings support the idea that psilocybin facilitates access to
personal memories and emotions,” Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, from the
Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, and first author of
both studies, said in the news release.
“Previous studies have suggested that psilocybin can improve people’s
sense of emotional well-being and even reduce depression in people with
anxiety. This is consistent with our finding that psilocybin decreases
mPFC activity, as many effective depression treatments do. The effects
need to be investigated further and ours was only a small study, but we
are interested in exploring psilocybin’s potential as a therapeutic tool,”
Carhart-Harris added.
The study authors reiterated that both trials contained small numbers
of participants, and further research into psilocybin’s effects on the
brain is needed.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about depression.
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