Therapeutic drug How LSD affects the brain

Drug and Means to Treat Mental Disorders: That's how LSD affects the brain

Although LSD is nowhere near as popular as it was in the 1960s and 1970s, the hallucinogenic drug is still widely used. There has been some evidence for some time that the substance could be used not only as an intoxicant, but also in mental disorders. In a new study, researchers have now shown how LSD affects the brain.

Drug with surprising effects

Lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD for short, is a hallucinogenic drug that was particularly popular during the hippie era in the 1960s and 1970s, but is still widely used today. The intoxicant, which is usually dropped on a small piece of blotter paper, provides hours of trips that can be both enjoyable and extremely negative. Scientists have been studying the surprising effects of LSD for decades. Researchers from Switzerland and the USA have now shown in a study how the drug affects the brain.

LSD is usually used as an intoxicant. But the substance also has a therapeutic effect. Researchers have now shown how the drug affects the brain. (Image: designer491 / fotolia.com)

Communication between certain brain areas is increased

Researchers from the Universities of Zurich (UZH) and Yale in New Haven (USA) have used brain imaging to study how LSD affects the brains of healthy participants.

As communication in the UZH states, communication between the brain areas involved in planning and decision-making is reduced to LSD-altered states of consciousness.

At the same time, the intoxicant increases communication between brain areas that are responsible for sensory sensation and movement.

Therapeutic effect of LSD

In addition, scientists used patterns of brain activity to find that patterns of communication altered by LSD depend on the stimulation of a specific receptor in the brain, the serotonin A receptor.

"If we blocked this receptor with the substance ketanserin, LSD would not work anymore," said Katrin Preller, lead author of the study, which was published in the journal "eLIFE".

In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in psychedelics for the treatment of mental disorders such as depression.

For example, scientific research has suggested that psychedelic drugs such as LSD could help with depression, stimulating the growth of new branches and connections between brain cells.

More targeted treatment of schizophrenia

Depressed patients suffer from severe depressed moods, often have increased self-focus and decreased serotonin levels. Initial studies at UZH have shown that psychedelics such as LSD could alleviate these symptoms.

On the other hand, disorders of sensory perception and thinking about how it causes LSD are comparable to the changes in thinking and perception in mental illnesses.

"Therefore, the new study results could directly affect the treatment of psychotic symptoms, as they occur in schizophrenia," said Franz Vollenweider, Professor at the Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich.

Although drugs to treat schizophrenia block a number of serotonin receptors, not all patients respond to the treatment.

"Based on the activity patterns found here, clinicians could identify long-term individual patients who are most likely to benefit from drugs with specific serotonin action mechanisms," said Katrin Preller of UZH and currently visiting professor at Yale University. (Ad)