"Magic mushrooms' psychedelic ingredient could help treat people with severe depression | The Guardian  Research by Professor David Nutt [professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London] has found that psilocybin switches off part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. It was known that this area is overactive in individuals suffering from depression. In his tests on healthy individuals, it was found that psilocybin had a profound effect on making these volunteers feel happier weeks after they had taken the drug, said Nutt – who was sacked as the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in 2009 after repeatedly clashing with government ministers about the dangers and classification of illicit drugs. Nutt's team also discovered that another section of the brain known as the default mode network was also influenced by psilocybin. ""People with depression have overactive default mode networks and so ruminate on themselves, on their inadequacies, on their badness, that they are worthless, that they have failed – to an extent that is sometimes delusional. Again psilo-cybin appears to block that activity and stops this obsessive rumination."" full article"
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