Beyond whacky trips: the therapeutic potential of psychedelics

Maybe disappointingly, Mason’s lab is bare of batik scarves, sitars and tablas. Student volunteers with prior experience taking psychedelics are talked through the entire process and reminded that whatever they feel will wear off after some hours. After administering the drug, e.g. psilocybin, Mason observes changes both in behaviour and brain activity. “We put participants in an MRI scanner and have them perform cognitive tasks. We observe their functional connectivity, so how different regions of the brain communicate and work with each other.”

To test the popular claim that psychedelics increase creativity, Mason uses flexible thinking tasks, such as how many alternate uses participants can think up for a for a common object. She also researches empathy by showing pictures of emotional states and asking participants to identify those emotions and how much they feel for the person in the picture. “We then relate those observations to changes we measure in the brain. We also look at the long-term effects to see whether participants’ mood and behaviour change even after the drug’s effects have worn off.”

Mason has shown that psychedelics reliably and acutely increase empathy, not only towards strangers, but also between partners in romantic relationships. “People feel more connected to each other, emotional stimuli have more impact. That is therapeutically relevant because in depression, we often see a decrease in empathy and a sense of disconnectedness. People feel very alone and suffer as a result.”

When it comes to creativity, the effect is less clear-cut. “Creativity is really hard to measure, of course. After counting the alternate use responses, we have to evaluate how new and useful the answers are.” Mason found no acute increase in creativity. “Actually, we see an impairment, which isn’t surprising since your executive functioning is affected under a psychedelic. However, in the days following, people tend to have more novel ideas.” 

This delayed effect can be therapeutically relevant, especially for individuals with conditions like depression, who often become stuck in maladaptive thought patterns. If psychedelics can help them think more flexibly and gain novel perspectives on their circumstances, they may be better able to break free from these patterns. 

Overall, she enjoys her experience working with participants. “They’re usually in a very good mood. There is a lot of laughing. They have fun in the lab and are happy to chat about their experience.  That said, there can be moments of confusion too. Imagine you’re in the middle of a psychedelic experience, and someone asks you to list all the things you can do with a cup. You may wonder what you are doing and why. After they complete the study we do explain what the purpose was, and that’s when they see how all of these tasks that they did fit into the bigger scientific picture.”

Mason herself developed an interest in the topic while studying Pharmacy. “I was most interested in drugs for mental health issues and worked in a pharmacy to gain experience. I was confronted with patients talking about side-effects, from insomnia to weight-gain or loss of libido. I grew a bit disillusioned and read review papers into alternatives, such as psychedelics. While there was very little good, recent research, the thing that really spoke to me was that it promised cures rather than ways of suppressing symptoms.”

When it comes to pharmaceutical interventions for treating depression, scientific development has stalled in recent decades, Mason explains. The prevailing solutions have their issues too. “With SSRIs [the most established family of drugs against depression], people don’t experience psychoactive effects, but they also can have potentially life-threatening side effects, such as suicidal ideation. It can also take weeks for people to experience any therapeutic relief – that’s a long time when you aren’t feeling well.” In contrast, psychedelics are showing promise in reducing symptoms for people with treatment-resistant depression, i.e. individuals who haven’t responded to SSRIs or other standard treatments. For them, psychedelics may offer a much-needed alternative path forward.