Psilocybin triggers activity-dependent rewiring of large-scale cortical networks
60 points
19 hours ago
| 5 comments
| cell.com
| HN
drooby
17 hours ago
[-]
Obsessive Compulsive Personality disorder (OCPD) is actually way more common than people realize, but it barely gets talked about compared to other mental health issues - and it may even be more of a root cause of things like anxiety, depression. and it is often confused with autism.

What’s interesting about this research is that it points to a possible biological reason why something like psilocybin might help, I.e it seems to loosen really rigid brain patterns. That’s basically the core issue in OCPD: being stuck in overcontrol and perfectionism. It’s not a treatment yet, but it does help explain why psychedelics could be useful for this kind of rigidity.

Would love to see more talk about this - OCPD is often overlooked both by the general public and unfortunately by those impacted by it

reply
N_Lens
10 hours ago
[-]
Mice are going to have the best mental health in the Universe before the decade is out.
reply
aesh2Xa1
2 hours ago
[-]
I wouldn't apply the usual "but mice" appeal to purity in this case.

For one, the paper specifically studied brain structures that are directly homologous in both mice and humans (retrosplenial cortex). The researchers specifically targeted evolutionarily-conserved circuitry.

Second, there is already human research on the topic, too, and this paper is reporting on a likely mechanism to understand "why" rather than "if." Here's one from a Yale researcher:

https://news.yale.edu/2025/09/23/psilocybin-breakthrough-men...

reply
jschveibinz
3 hours ago
[-]
Thanks for the chuckle
reply
khelavastr
13 hours ago
[-]
So do 5hT2a receptors when stimulated by DMT-family compounds from INMT during dreamy sleep.
reply
renewiltord
8 hours ago
[-]
Drugs people want to legalize found to be therapeutically indispensable. Law that specifically allows only these categories found to be unrelated to this mechanism.
reply
NotGMan
8 hours ago
[-]
Many mental illness are now being fully resolved after ~9 to 12 months on a low carb diet.

Not a magic bullet (since I know many idiots will comment who are incapable in thinking in probabilities but only think in black and white), but the fact that some people were fully healed or at least partially improved their life quality is obviously insane progress compared to any medication, which either doesn't work fully or stops working over time.

This channel has more examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mlku8oWrQLk

reply
KempyKolibri
7 hours ago
[-]
We have some case studies and pilot studies without any kind of control. Perhaps keto/low carb could be helpful (it certainly is with epilepsy!), but I certainly haven’t seen any evidence that it’s superior to other diets that achieve the same things (I.e. weight loss, or higher clinician contact time - a lot of these pilot studies end up losing a bunch of weight and getting several extra hours per week of contact with their clinician - who knows if much/all of the benefit comes from this?).

Having had quite a lot of experience with the keto/low carb crowd, I think we’d see a lot more adoption/interest in their ideas if they approached things in a less ideological/dogmatic way. It’s hard for responsible clinicians to get involved with, say, Metabolic Mind when people like Bret Scher hand wave around the CVD risks from high SFA intakes, or big up low quality work like the godawful Keto-CTA paper.

There _are_ responsible keto advocates out there like Ethan Weiss, and I suspect that if the keto/low carb community were to promote _their_ work rather than that of people like Nick Norwitz and Dave Feldman then their diet of choice would be taken more seriously.

Unfortunately much of the low carb movement is quack town at the moment. I hope they get their act together, there are benefits in there for people in need, but they need to get serious first.

reply
NotGMan
3 hours ago
[-]
I've never heard of any other diet or non-keto nutritionist being able to reverse such mental illness. Do you have any links?

>> but I certainly haven’t seen any evidence that it’s superior to other diets that achieve the same things

You can find many N=1 examples for this on the linked youtube channel and then you have hundreds of testemonials here (click load more) on the carnivore diet healing autoimmune issues: https://www.revero.com/blog/success-stories

No other non-keto diet comes even close to this.

I've only ever come across the keto diet as the one that can do this to such an extent. I've only heard of some T2 diabetics reversing it by losing weight in the context of "any diet that causes weight loss".

They don't wave around CVD risks: they show you that all the pro "SFA is bad because of CVD" crowd is also full of biases and very bad science and pharma sponsored studies that shill statins etc...

I agree that the Keto-CTA paper was trash. Horwitz isn't the best when it comes to this.

Though when you say that most are quaks: the entire "SFA is bad" field can also be marked like this when you see that most of those studies are trash, how eg "lasagna" is designated as "meat" in studies and similar trash.

There is no clear signal about SFAs being bad since you can find counter-studies for each viewpoint.

reply