Neuroplasticity and Psilocybin: How the Brain Rewires After a Journey

Managing mental health can feel like an uphill battle - but it doesn’t need to be. Prescription drugs and talk therapy have their place, but don’t always address the deeper causes of your troubles.

Enter psilocybin, or magic mushrooms. Psychedelics have unique properties that facilitate the rapid growth of new neural connections while allowing you to shift rigid thought patterns and self-sabotaging behaviors. The mechanism at play? Neuroplasticity.

Here’s how research into psilocybin and neuroplasticity are making headway, with regard to both their importance for mental health and for illuminating a new perspective on life.

The Problem: The Rigid Brain of Mental Illness

Mental illnesses trap your mind in a vice. Instead of untethered, explorative thought processes, when our minds are burdened by anxiety, depression, or melancholy, we struggle to break out of rigid, ruminative thought patterns. “It’ll always be this way”; “There’s nothing I can do”; “I can’t think of a way to fix this”; “No one cares,” are common trains of thought.

Scientists call it repetitive negative thinking (RNT). The most insidious part? Once these negative loops start, they tend to become self-perpetuating and difficult to manage. Such ruminative, repetitive thinking is a significant, transdiagnostic risk factor that is linked to or exacerbates a number of different forms of mental illness, including depression, anxiety, addiction, PTSD, OCD and eating disorders.

What Is Neuroplasticity? (& Why We Lose It)

In the literature, neuroplasticity is defined as the brain’s ability to “change its activity in response to stimuli by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections.”

Put plainly, neuroplasticity is what allows your brain to interpret and adapt to change. A “healthy” brain can tie disparate ideas together, explore novel reasoning, and maintain logical coherence in the face of emotional obstacles - unless it’s being sabotaged.

The Default Mode Network

The human brain is the most complex system in the known universe. Like a supercomputer, your brain has its own software designed to promote efficiency, reduce harm, and carry out tasks. You can think of the Default Mode Network, or DMN, as a neural screen-saver.

This network develops in childhood and puberty and, throughout adulthood, comes online when your brain lacks new stimuli. From neuroscientific studies, we know the DMN is crucial for self-reflection. We also know that depression and anxiety intensify the DMN to the point of locking your brain into existing thought patterns - a precursor to mental illnesses like major depressive disorder.

How Psilocybin Boosts Neuroplasticity

This is the crux of psilocybin’s utility for neuroplasticity and mental illness - it temporarily unfreezes and suppresses the DMN, allowing your brain to rewire and map new neural connections freely.

After consuming psilocybin and disabling the DMN, your brain also facilitates the secretion of another crucial chemical, called BDNF, or Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor. Experts have pointed toward research done on mice, which displayed significant increases in both the size and density of neuronal connections.

The exact science is complex. But what’s clear is that BDNF catalyzes neuroplasticity the way fanning an open flame helps it burn a little brighter.

Psilocybin & Neuroplasticity: How To Benefit

Maximizing neuroplasticity with psilocybin isn’t like taking a multivitamin; it’s not fire-and-forget. It’s also unlike most SSRIs, which take weeks of usage before effects accumulate to a therapeutic level in your system.

Psilocybin’s effects are more acute - a mushroom trip can last up to six hours. After you come down, your brain is primed to reap the benefits. How you use your time after the conscious effects of a psychedelic wear off is called integration.

Integration: The Critical Window

Psychedelic integration capitalizes on the neuroplastic window in the same way a blacksmith shapes steel. Psilocybin (the furnace’s heat) makes your brain (the metal) pliable, then you strike before things cool.

But while a blacksmith may have minutes to act, the psychedelic user’s neuroplastic window can last from days to weeks. Beyond laying down new neural circuitry, integration also helps you “stick the landing” of coming down from your trip.

Some psychedelic users experience ontological shock as they exit their trip - a feeling of having your reality shaken or disrupted. While unpleasant, this feeling is temporary and recedes faster if you follow therapeutic integration techniques.

Therapeutic Techniques

Despite psychedelic research being hamstrung for political reasons since the 1960s, science has long recognized the potential of mining the “afterglow” for all it’s worth. To capitalize, you’ll want to incorporate therapeutic techniques that align with your purpose.

Common therapeutic integration strategies for psilocybin-induced neuroplasticity include:

• Drawing or painting
• Listening to music, chanting, or rhythmic drumming
• Yoga or massage
• Journaling or meditation
• Talk or group therapy
• Shinrin Yoku ‘forest bathing’ nature-based mindfulness

In truth, the scope of integration practices is wider than you think. Matching the technique with your unique needs can be a challenge, which is why psilocybin therapy is often conducted in clinical or retreat settings under the stewardship of professional guides.

Other Implications for Psilocybin

Psilocybin’s neuroplastic effects are gaining increasing scientific support as an alternative option for treatment-resistant depression and other issues. The exact mechanism? “Global increases in brain network integration,” some scholars say.

There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that psilocybin’s ability to facilitate neuroplasticity by muting the DMN may also assist with managing other mental conditions.

Addiction

Addiction starts in the brain. While the exact pathway is still being looked at, scientists have some evidence showing that psilocybin may be an effective means of curbing addictive behavior, particularly for alcohol use disorder.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Rigid and repetitive thinking is characteristic of the DMN - it’s also a calling card of obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Since 2006, studies have observed a relationship between OCD symptoms and the neurochemical effects of psilocybin, though the exact nature of the relationship is still under the microscope.

There are also emerging arguments for psilocybin’s ability to tackle PTSD, eating disorders, and anxiety disorders as well, but more structurally-sound studies are needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

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