guardian.co.uk,
Sarah Boseley, health editor, Monday 23 January 2012
 |
Magic
mushrooms' active ingredient psilocybin enables users to
experience more vivid recollections. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP |
A drug
derived from magic mushrooms could help people with depression by enabling them
to relive positive and happy moments of their lives, according to scientists
including the former government drug adviser, Professor David Nutt.
Two
studies, for which scientists struggled to find funding because of public
suspicion and political sensitivity around psychedelic drugs, have shed light
on how magic mushrooms affect the brain.
Nutt, from
Imperial College London, was sacked as a government drug adviser after claiming
tobacco and alcohol were more dangerous than cannabis and psychedelic drugs such
as ecstasy and LSD.
He believes
prejudice and fear have prevented important scientific work on psychedelic
drugs. Research began in the 1950s and 60s but was stopped by the
criminalisation of drugs and stringent regulations which made the work costly.
"Everybody
who has taken psychedelics makes the point that these can produce the most
profound changes in the state of awareness and being that any of them have
experienced," said Nutt.
The drugs
had been used for millennia, he said, since psychedelic mushrooms grew in the
Elysian fields of Greece. Aldous Huxley wrote The Doors Of Perception about the
insight such drugs gave him into the life of the mind.
The
studies, led by Robin Carhart-Harris, also of Imperial College, looked at the
effect that psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, has on the
brain through the use of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. The first
study on healthy volunteers, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), surprised the researchers. They had
assumed the drug might increase activity in certain parts of the brain.
Instead, it decreased it in the "hub" regions which link different
areas.
"This
loss of connectivity might mean consciousness is less constrained by inputs
from the outside world via the senses, which could explain why people can
imagine things very vividly," said Nutt.
The 10 men
and five women who volunteered experienced changes in visual perception,
extremely vivid imaginings and changes in their perception of time and of size and
space.
The MRI
scans showed lowered bloodflow to regions linked to the ego, the sense of self
and personality.
A second
study, to be published on Thursday in the British Journal of Psychiatry, gave
volunteers cues to remember positive events in their lives such as their
wedding or performance in a play. Their recollection became very vivid.
"It was almost as if rather than imagining the memories, they were
actually seeing them," said Carhart-Harris. "This could be very
useful in psychotherapy, for instance in people with depression who find it
very difficult to remember good times and are stuck in the negative."
The team
are now hoping to do a further study which will involve giving psilocybin to
depressed people who are undergoing psychotherapy, in the hope that it will
allow them to relive times of past happiness.
The studies
showed that psilocybin worked on the same areas of the brain as the SSRI
antidepressants such as Prozac, as well as talking therapies and meditation as
carried out by skilled practitioners. But the advantage over pills, the team
believes, is that the positive effect could be long-lasting.
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