Letter to the editor on "Increased low-frequency brain responses to music after psilocybin therapy for depression".
Journal of affective disorders – October 01, 2023
Source: PubMed
Summary
Psilocybin therapy's impact on musical brain response may be more complex than initially reported. A critical analysis reveals that key factors like age and biological sex weren't fully accounted for when measuring the amplitude of low frequency fluctuations in brain activity. While ANOVA tests showed promising changes in how depressed patients processed music after treatment, these results warrant careful interpretation.
Abstract
The recent publication in the Journal of Affective Disorders titled "Increased low-frequency brain responses to music after psilocybin therapy for depression" identified significant region-of-interest based effects of treatment in the task scans. In this letter to the editor, I am hoping to raise methodological concerns with regards to the ANOVA ROI analysis that were otherwise not acknowledged in this study. These concerns raise questions as to the impact of confounds, including as age and biological sex, on the reported proportion variance explained by the effects of psilocybin treatment for depression.