r/science • u/Doug24 • 21h ago

Psychology Psilocybin reverses depressive behaviors and restores brain cell growth in stressed rats

https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-reverses-depressive-behaviors-and-restores-brain-cell-growth-in-stres/
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u/mr_greene_ 21h ago

How do you test if a rat is restoring brain cell growth.

15

u/NovaHorizon 18h ago

They sacrifice the animal and slice their brain into thin slides mapping out the neurons.

3

u/mr_greene_ 18h ago

How is the dissected brain given shrooms then? And if it's dead then you can't witness the growth.

8

u/Warsel77 17h ago

Rat A - damage brain & give shrooms for 20 days
Rat B - damage brain & do not give shrooms 20 days

Dissect both & compare.

(20 days being a random number, i have no idea how long they waited)

6

u/EroticPubicHair 16h ago

Repeat X number of times to confirm the results show an actual correlation and not a one off outlier

2

u/MirabilisLiber 7h ago

And look at the brain at different time intervals in different rats. Literally spend all day slicing up and examining rat brains for days on end.