Got fungus on the brain?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Your brain works because different regions constantly send messages to each other. It doesn’t work as well when we’re depressed. But Psilocybin from certain mushrooms, may help by changing which brain pathways grow stronger.
At Cornell, Alex Kwan’s team studied mice tripping on shrooms. They traced which brain areas sent stronger signals to mood-related regions.
Results? Psilocybin didn’t just reshuffle brain connections randomly. The pathways in use during the trip were most likely to grow stronger later. And when researchers silenced certain neurons during the trip, connections disappeared!
The twist? What the brain is doing DURING the high may affect changes AFTERWARD.
TRIPPY!
Reference: Jiang, Q., Shao, L. X., Yao, S., Savalia, N. K., Gilbert, A. D., Davoudian, P. A., … & Kwan, A. C. (2026). Psilocybin triggers an activity-dependent rewiring of large-scale cortical networks. Cell, 189(2), 659-675.