Chronic stress can strip away connections between brain cells, disrupting the circuits they form. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, found that psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in “magic mushrooms,” reshapes this wiring differently in healthy mice and those affected by stress.
The study, published on October 15 in Nature Neuroscience, also identified a group of brain cells that supported new connections without triggering a rodent behavior used as a proxy for hallucinogenic activity.
“I consider this work a major advance, particularly in our understanding of how psilocybin reshapes neural circuits and its potential implications for treating mental disorders,” said senior author Yi Zuo, professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology at UC Santa Cruz.
This is a huge deal.
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