{"id":351395,"date":"2025-12-16T04:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T04:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/351395\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T04:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T04:18:11","slug":"psilocybin-breaks-depressive-cycles-by-rewiring-the-brain-study-suggests-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/351395\/","title":{"rendered":"Psilocybin Breaks Depressive Cycles by Rewiring The Brain, Study Suggests : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have used a specially engineered virus<\/a> to help track the brain changes caused by psilocybin<\/a> in mice, revealing how the drug could be breaking loops of depressive thinking.<\/p>\n

This may explain why psilocybin keeps<\/a> showing positive<\/a> results for people with depression<\/a> in clinical trials<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Rumination<\/a> is one of the main points for depression, where people have this unhealthy focus, and they keep dwelling on the same negative thoughts,” says<\/a> Cornell University biomedical engineer Alex Kwan.<\/p>\n

“By reducing some of these feedback loops, our findings are consistent with the interpretation that psilocybin may rewire the brain to break, or at least weaken, that cycle.”<\/p>\n

Related: Laughing Gas Can Offer Immediate Relief From Depression, Study Finds<\/a><\/p>\n

Depression is a leading global cause<\/a> of disability, with more than 300 million people impacted<\/a> by the mood disorder.<\/p>\n

Many people find current treatments have challenging side effects<\/a> or do not work for them at all<\/a>, so there is an ongoing search for alternative solutions, such as psilocybin.<\/p>\n

\"DiagramHow psilocybin changes the connections between mouse neurons. (Jiang et al., Cell, 2025)<\/p>\n

Derived initially from magic mushrooms, psilocybin is a hallucinogenic compound that is being investigated for its anti-inflammatory properties<\/a> in addition to its potential as an antidepressant.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Kwan’s laboratory showed that psilocybin reshapes brain connections<\/a>, finding these changes could last for a long time. But why some neurons grew more connections, while others reduced them, was a mystery.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n

In their new study led by biomedical engineer Quan Jiang, the researchers took a closer look at which brain circuits were being rewired and how, using an engineered rabies virus to track changes in brain connections.<\/p>\n

In its natural form, the rabies virus<\/a> spreads through neurons, jumping across synapses.<\/p>\n

“Here we use the rabies virus to read out the connectivity in the brain,” explains<\/a> Kwan.<\/p>\n

The virus trailed paths of fluorescent proteins through the mouse brains. Mice received a single dose of psilocybin or a placebo<\/a> and then, one day later, the virus. One week later, the researchers compared the viral ‘trails’.<\/p>\n

Scans revealed areas of the brain associated with sensory processing became more connected with the part of the brain that takes action.<\/p>\n

What’s more, connections within the cortex, where negative thought feedback loops take place<\/a> in humans, were reduced.<\/p>\n

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Jiang and team also found that brain activity seems to direct where psilocybin rewiring occurs, opening the prospect of using methods like magnetic stimulation<\/a> to modulate targeted neural activity.<\/p>\n

Of course, these findings still need to be confirmed in humans, as not all findings from research in mice translate across species<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the results would explain some of the results of human observation studies, and one of the most compelling ideas about how psychedelics work.<\/p>\n

“Our study hints at an exciting avenue for future research to combine neuromodulation with psychedelics to precisely target [and rewire] specific circuits,” the researchers conclude<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This research was published in Cell<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have used a specially engineered virus to help track the brain changes caused by psilocybin in mice,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97,1352],"class_list":["post-351395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-msft-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}