What Psilocybin Does to Your Brain | Can It Improve Mental Health?

welcome to the lab everyone I'm Jonathan benan with the Institute of human anatomy and today we're going to talk about how this the human brain is affected by psilocybin psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound that is often used for recreational purposes however it has also gained significant interest for its effects on the brain and its potential therapeutic uses for conditions such as anxiety depression addiction and PTSD so today we'll obviously take a look at real human brains and explore what psilocybin does to certain areas of the brain discuss what someone experiences while using psilocybin and as I already alluded to the potential long-term effects that psilocybin can have on someone's mental health and of course cover some important considerations with legality and safety it's going to be a magical one so let's do this so before before we look more at the brain and discuss the effects of I need to mention that psilocybin is listed as a schedule one drug and is illegal in most places throughout the United States however there are locations where it has been decriminalized and even legalized much of this due to some of the research showing some of its positive outcomes for mental health however even though there are potential benefits for mental health with psilocybin there are also some safety concerns and considerations that we'll need to discuss so this video is for educational purposes only only and we are not suggesting that everyone should just go out and try psilocybin and with that being said psilocybin is a hallucinogenic substance found in certain types of mushrooms and when ingested psilocybin is metabolized into syosin by enzymes found in the intestine as well as in the liver and even though I may use psilocybin and syosin somewhat interchangeably throughout the video know that it is the pyosin that is the active converted compound of psilocybin that is responsible for the active effects now once ingested it takes about converted to syosin and eventually pass through the blood brain barrier and this is when people start to have what the recreational Community often refers to as the trip but I'll probably mostly refer to it as the journey or the psilocybin experience but once the psilocybin is in the brain it primarily affects the brain by binding to serotonin receptors and for you receptor nerds out there specifically the 5 ht2a receptor there are many different serotonin receptors located within the brain but there are two things that are really important for us to think about with psilocybin one psilocybin has a strong affinity for this particular 5ht 2A receptor and two this receptor is concentrated in areas of the brain responsible for mood perception vision and cognition