Psilocybin is an emerging treatment for depression, but its effects on sleep are not well understood. Clinical trials show large improvements in depressive symptoms, but sleep quality or insomnia symptoms have not been directly studied. Preliminary data indicate that both depressive symptoms and sleep disturbances decreased significantly after psilocybin use, though sleep improvements were smaller than those for depression. More severe sleep disturbances at baseline were linked to a lower probability of depression remission, suggesting a potential interaction between sleep and psilocybin's efficacy. Addressing sleep disturbances could enhance therapeutic outcomes and lead to more personalized treatment strategies.
After a therapeutically relevant dose of psilocybin, high-frequency oscillations at 100 Hz appear in the infralimbic cortex of rats, lasting about an hour, while overall neuron firing rates and spike-train complexity decrease. These acute effects are stronger when the animal is at rest than during a sustained attention task. Over the following days, power in beta and low-gamma frequencies (20–60 Hz) gradually increases in the infralimbic cortex. The findings point to infralimbic network oscillations as potential markers of psychedelic-induced plasticity that unfold over multiple days, revealing details not easily seen in human brain imaging.