This is the first report to find that PSI can treat brain injury, given its anti-inflammatory properties and promotion of neuroplasticity and cell growth.
Mild repetitive head injuries do more than just cause short-term issues with cognition, behavior and motor skills. They also lead to an increased risk of dementia, Parkinson’s disease and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and cost billions of dollars in health care.
There is no medical treatment for these types of injuries but new preliminary research out of Northeastern University shows a solution may lie in a surprising place: psilocybin, the psychedelic found in drugs like magic mushrooms.
A group of researchers including Northeastern psychology professor Craig Ferris tested the healing effects of psilocybin on adult female rats. After these rats suffered mild head injuries, researchers found that being treated with psilocybin helped restore normal brain function.
“I was absolutely stunned,” Ferris said. “It actually improves these neuroradiological measures associated with head injury.”
The research has not yet been peer reviewed, but appeared in PubMed as a preprint. It could show promise as a potential course of treatment for mild repetitive head injuries, Ferris said.
This is the first report to find that serotonergic hallucinogen psilocybin (PSI) can treat brain injury, given its anti-inflammatory properties and promotion of neuroplasticity and cell growth. Other studies have explored these PSIs as a solution to treat other psychiatric disorders like depression and anxiety, so researchers were curious about whether it could treat head injuries as well.
The type of head injuries researchers looked at were mild repetitive traumatic brain injuries. These are the types of injuries that young and professional athletes, military members and elderly people might encounter. They don’t cause any damage to the skull, other than a small bump, but can lead to inflammation, impaired blood flow and other damage to the brain as well as temporary confusion and disorientation.
“There’s no contusion and bleeding in the brain,” Ferris said. “All you see is the bump on the head from the edema on the skin. That’s perfectly fine, but if you have two or more bumps, then you’ve got these long, protracted problems with neuroinflammation, changes in the blood-brain barrier permeability, and changes in connectivity.”
The rats were impacted once a day for three days in a row so they had a “bump on the head” and then were given a single 3 kilogram dose of PSI via injection after each bump.
Researchers then evaluated the rats using MRI to track their brain activity and vascular reactivity. What they found was the rats treated with PSI had reduced neuroradiological and molecular issues from the brain injury.
The study mimicked a model from the National Football League to stimulate the type of head injury a person may get when playing sports, Ferris said. The 9-month-old rats were awake when they were concussed, much like humans, and didn’t suffer skull damage, contusions or bleedings. Blood samples were collected and MRIs were done within an hour of the injury on the third day so researchers could see how the body responds to subtle injuries.
“We impact them on the head,” Ferris said. “We don’t use anesthesia because people aren’t impacted under anesthesia. Everything we do mimics the human experience. We’ve replicated the problem as true as we could to the actual experience. Our results we get with MRIs are the same results reported in the clinic. So not only does the experience replicate, but the results from that experience translate to the human condition as measured in scanners all over Boston.”
Researchers also evaluated the animals’ cognitive and motor behaviors. These tests included a beam walk and the Rotarod test, which is often used in Parkinson’s disease models to assess equilibrium and motor function.
What researchers found was that the PSI reduced the brain edema from the head injury, potentially strengthening the blood-brain barrier and inducing hyperconnectivity. Phosphorylated tau, a marker of neurodegenerative diseases, was also reduced and brain derived neurotrophic factor was increased with PSI treatment.
“It really did incredible things,” Ferris said. “What we found was that with head injuries is that functional connections go down across the brain. You give the psilocybin and not only does it return to normal, but the brain becomes hyper connected.”
Ferris said this research may open up the possibility of using psilocybin to treat other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease. He and his team next want to study whether this method works in treating head injuries long after the injury has occurred.
“We know right now that you can treat (head injuries) on site,” Ferris said.