People who have used psychedelics are moderately more likely to endorse alternative facts and to believe that facts are politically influenced, compared with people who have never used them. This association held after accounting for demographics, psychiatric conditions, and other drug use. No link was found between psychedelic use and preferring intuition over evidence when verifying facts. Among other drugs examined, only alcohol showed a negative association with belief in alternative facts. The findings suggest that psychedelic use correlates with non-conformist thinking styles, which may stem from the drugs' psychological effects or from a shared trait predisposing people to unconventional beliefs and illicit substance use.
Psilocybin, a psychedelic substance approaching clinical use, enhances structural plasticity in the brain. In cultured mouse hippocampal neurons, robust effects on pre- and postsynaptic protein expression (Piccolo and Homer1) appeared 1–3 hours after treatment, while presynaptic Synapsin-1 peaked at 72 hours, suggesting a rapidly normalizing window of plasticity. In an immortalized microglia cell line, psilocybin demonstrated anti-inflammatory effects against a lipopolysaccharide challenge by reducing tumor necrosis factor-alpha secretion. These discrete, acute cell-type-specific effects provide insight into psilocybin's mechanisms of action and potential therapeutic value for conditions like depression and cluster headache.