Mushrooms are known are being a "psychedelic" drug when they are ingested. They are currently being researched because Doctors are interested in their effect on the brain and as a possible therapeutic treatment for mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, and OCD due to their ability to alter brain function. Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris says, "Only by losing the self, can you find the self. People try and run away from things and to forget, but with psychedelic drugs they're forced to confront and really look at themselves."
These drugs are referred to as hallucinogens. There is a certain chemical inside them called psilocybin that is responsible for this activity in the brain while on these drugs. This chemical has sparked interest in researchers because of it's ability to make users see the world differently. Dr. Carhart-Harris has scanned the brains of 30 healthy volunteers after they were injected with this chemical. He found that regions of the brain associated with emotional thinking became more active than before. He also noticed that the regions of the brain that were responsible for self-consciousness, introspection, and high-level thinking were less active. This chemical is allowing therapists to see the regions of the brain that these mental health conditions are usually less prevalent due to these other regions in the brain that we use for every day activities. Carhart-Harris says, "By disrupting the network [of the brain] you can liberate them from those depressive symptoms by showing them it's possible to escape those thoughts," when discussing the negative thoughts that tend to accompany with depression. The current approach to depression is with selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) that increase the levels of serotonin in the brain to improve moods. However, they are not effective in everyone. Researchers think that psilocybin can change this dilemma by allowing people to confront what is really going on with them emotionally.
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment