Get ready to free your mind.
A new study finds that tripping on magic mushrooms may be the fastest way into quieting traditional brain activity and jumpstarting new connections between areas of the brain that previously didn't communicate with one another.
Psilocybin, the main psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms, sprouts new links across previously disconnected brain regions, the study found, temporarily altering the brain's entire organizational framework.
The data visualization below (b) shows how these new connections among separate regions of the brain in people dosed with psilocybin; the one on the left represents the conventional connections in the brains of people not on the drug. You can see how much more connected the trippers brains are:
Journal of the Royal Society Interface
Visualization of the brain connections in the brain of a person on psilocybin (right) and the brain of a person not given the drug.
These new highways of information may be the reason shroom users see sounds or hear colors. And they could also be responsible for giving magic mushrooms some of their antidepressant qualities.