A new research led by Dr. Vidita A. Vaidya of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai in collaboration with Cornell, Yale, and Columbia universities. It shows how psychedelics can be a potential treatment for anxiety and depression. The data has now been published in the journal Neuron, detailing how psychedelics work in the brain.
Psychedelic drugs, associated with the counterculture and spiritual experiences, have increasingly come under investigation regarding their reported health benefits. Since many conventional treatments for mental disorders do not work on everyone, alternative options are crucial. According to this research, psychedelics may help reduce anxiety due to their ability to block some pathways in the brain.
It focuses on a type of psychedelic known to cause changes in the serotonin system, specifically at the 5-HT2A receptor, where mood regulation takes place. Researchers used animal models presenting anxiety-like behaviours that exhibited DOI, a commonly used psychedelic in research.
The ventral hippocampus was under focus due to its contribution to emotional regulation. The investigators found that DOI selectively activates fast-firing parvalbumin (PV)-positive interneurons in this area. Activation of such neurons provides calming feedback to other brain regions and decreases anxiety-like phenotypes.
It was challenging, it nearly took ten years to pinpoint the brain region and the kind of neurons the drug acts on. According to Vaidya, When one consumes a drug, it roams around in their entire system. They wanted to understand where exactly this psychedelic act upon. They did extensive tests delivering the drug into different areas of the brain before settling on the vHpc as majorly contributing to the action of the psychedelic drug.
Once this location was discovered, the team decided to focus on which neurons were activated by DOI. This was done through genetic tests and receptor experiments that specify how psychedelics help people overcome anxiety disorders.
The implications of this research are tremendous. It brings out the potential to design new drugs that would capitalize on the beneficial effects of psychedelics without the hallucinatory components. Understanding the specific mechanisms involved could lead to more effective treatments for anxiety disorders.
Furthermore, the study provides very useful information to clinical researchers who have been conducting psychedelic research on humans. For instance, according to Vaidya, this research creates a roadmap, guiding future studies towards specific regions of the brain known to be activated by a compound like psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
The findings also provided new pathways to explore other brain receptors. Researchers can now further explore the complex effects of psychedelics in a better way. “It’s like solving a puzzle,” Vaidya explained, pointing out that while some effects may well be traced to certain specific receptors, others may involve different circuits of the brain.
With the interest shown in psychedelic research, this paper is an important step towards using these substances to treat mental illness and brings hope to hundreds and millions of anxious and depressed people.
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