Psilocybin is a hallucinogen with complex neurobiological and behavioral effects. Underlying these effects are changes in brain neuroplasticity. We hypothesized psilocybin given during adolescence, a time of heightened neuroplasticity, particularly in the forebrain, would affect emotional behavior and the associated underlying neuroanatomy, neurocircuitry, a...
Psilocin, a naturally occurring hallucinogenic component of magic mushrooms, exerts notable psychoactive effects in both humans and rodents. However, the underlying mechanisms remain not fully understood. Blood-oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a valuable tool in many preclinical and clinical trials for invest...
Abstract Recent clinical breakthroughs hold great promise for the application of psilocybin in the treatments of psychological disorders, such as depression, addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psilocybin is a psychedelic whose metabolite, psilocin, is a 5-HT2A receptor agonist. Nevertheless, the underlying mechanisms for the effects of psilocybin ...
Introduction:Psilocybin, a classical psychedelic, has shown to produce persistent antidepressant effects, including in patients with treatment-resistant depression. In clinical practice, it is common to coprescribe benzodiazepines (BZDs) alongside antidepressants. However, our preliminary study indicated that preadministration of lorazepam diminished the ant...
Emerging evidence suggests that classical psychedelics may offer therapeutic potential for opioid use disorder (OUD) by alleviating key hallmarks such as altered reward processing and dependence. However, the mechanisms behind these effects remain unclear. Our data demonstrate that a single administration of the psychedelic psilocybin (PSI) reduces condition...
method was developed for the analysis of serotonin in Caenorhabditis elegans. Samples were subjected to solvent-solvent extraction from basic conditions into n-heptanol. The serotonin was then back-extracted into acetic acid, the solution diluted into basic buffer, and labelled with 3-(2-furoyl) quinoline-2-carboxaldehyde in the presence of cyanide. The samp...
Chronic pain and mood disorders co-occur, exacerbate one another and share neurobiological mechanisms, but whether a single intervention could promptly alleviate both conditions remains unclear. Here, in two chronic pain models, we show that a single dose of psilocybin induces a rapid and sustained reversal of both mechanical allodynia and anxiodepression-li...
The extent to which anatomical connectivity constrains pharmacologically altered brain dynamics remains poorly understood. Here, we combined psilocybin administration with a structurally informed effective-connectivity model to examine how structural connectivity shapes directed inter-regional influences across experiential contexts. Using dynamic causal mod...
Recent advancements in the study of psilocybin and its active metabolite psilocin have highlighted their unique psychedelic properties and potential therapeutic applications, particularly in the rapid and sustained treatment of depression. However, the potent acute psychedelic effects of psilocybin necessitate a deeper understanding of the neural mechanisms ...
Psilocybin produces an altered state of consciousness in humans and is associated with complex spatiotemporal changes in cortical networks. Given the emphasis on rodent models for mechanistic studies, there is a need for characterization of the effect of psilocybin on cortex-wide network dynamics. Previous electroencephalographic studies of psychedelics in r...
Abstract Psychedelic drugs have profound effects on perception, cognition and mood. How psychedelics affect neural signaling to produce these effects remains poorly understood. We investigated the effect of the classic psychedelic psilocybin on neural activity patterns and spatial encoding in the retrosplenial cortex of head-fixed mice navigating on a treadm...
Psilocybin, a naturally occurring hallucinogenic component of magic mushrooms, has significant psychoactive effects in both humans and rodents. But the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Blood-oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a useful tool in many preclinical and clinical trials to investigate ps...
To determine effects of psychedelics on neuronal architecture, we used two-photon microscopy to image dendritic spines in mouse frontal cortex after administering psilocybin (Neuron, 109, 2535, 2021) and compared with other psychoactive drugs.
This review presents a general background of psilocybin pharmacology and discusses its uses in treating various mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and addiction. A summary of preliminary clinical trials utilizing psilocybin in each disorder is presented, along with an analysis of the neurobiological mechanisms...
The Psilocybe genus is well known for the synthesis of valuable psychoactive compounds such as Psilocybin, Psilocin, Baeocystin and Aeruginascin. The ubiquity of Psilocybin synthesis in Psilocybe has been attributed to a horizontal gene transfer mechanism of a ~20Kb gene cassette. A recently published highly contiguous reference genome derived from long read...
