Magic mushrooms can lead to long-term improvements in depression, study finds

Magic mushroom's drug psilocybin can lead to long-term improvements in depression symptom severity, a small study has found.

The study, conducted by the Imperial College of London, looked at brain scans of 60 participants and combines two trials where psilocybin was administered.

In the first trial, everyone received psilocybin, and in the second one, some received psilocybin and others took a different kind of antidepressant. The peer reviewed research was published on Monday in Nature Medicine.

"In both trials, the antidepressant response to psilocybin was rapid, sustained and correlated with decreases in fMRI brain network modularity, implying that psilocybin’s antidepressant action may depend on a global increase in brain network integration," the study reads. 

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