01/02/2026
Psilocybin doesn’t just alter perception—it temporarily erases the brain’s unique signature.
New brain-imaging research shows that psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms, profoundly disrupts the patterns that make each human brain recognisable as an individual. During the psychedelic experience, these patterns become so scrambled that different people’s brain scans are nearly indistinguishable from one another.
Using an advanced approach known as precision functional mapping, neuroscientists scanned the brains of seven healthy adults before, during, and for up to three weeks after psilocybin administration. For comparison, the same participants were also scanned after taking methylphenidate (Ritalin), a commonly prescribed stimulant.
The results were striking. Psilocybin caused widespread desynchronisation across functional brain networks, with the most dramatic effects seen in the Default Mode Network (DMN)—a system closely linked to self-reflection, autobiographical memory, and the sense of identity. As the DMN lost its usual coordination, the brain’s “neural fingerprint” effectively disappeared.
Even more intriguing, some alterations in brain connectivity persisted for weeks after the experience, long after the drug had left the body. This lasting rewiring may help explain why psilocybin is being intensively studied for conditions such as depression, addiction, and PTSD—where rigid patterns of thought play a central role.
Rather than simply “turning off” the brain, psilocybin appears to loosen its most deeply ingrained structures, temporarily dissolving the boundaries of the self and opening the door to long-term psychological change.
Source:
Siegel, J. S., et al. (2024). Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain. Nature.
