Dementia is a degenerative disease that no known drug can completely stop or reverse, despite decades of tests.
Now, a historically vilified psychedelic is emerging as a possible new avenue for controlling Alzheimer’s symptoms.
Neuroscientists around the world are starting to investigate if psilocybin – the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms – can help protect the aging brain.
Psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs REACITVATE memories and mental states which belong ot the early childhood: this might be one reason why these drug can have a positive effect on some mental illnesses
Explanation:
I have published since 2006 a complete explanation of Near-Death Experience(NDE): In a NDE we can perceive LIVE DIRECT CONSCIOUS how a single stimulus/thought/situation is processed by the brain — step-by-step. e.g. we can perceive with NDEs that memories since the 5th month of fetus-age are reactivated in exactly the same order as the physical senses develop:
touch sense > acoustic sense > optical sense > birth(indirect) > early social-/environmental-experiences > autobiographical experiences since the 2nd year of childhood up to the actual age
Experiences which are reported by users of psychedelic drugs are identical with such experiences which are ´early social-/environmental-experiences´ in NDEs: Therefore we can say that psychedelics REOPEN SELECTIVE an access to our mental state of the early childhood.
Or in other words: To combine research about psychedelics and NDEs would allow to understand the working brain much better — and to develop new therapies against psychic problems.
(A complete explanation of NDEs can be found in my book in German language: Kinseher Richard “Auflösung grosser Fragen: Was ist Bewusstsein? Was ist Zeit?” )