How Psychedelics Repair Brain Myelin!

We’ve written before about myelin (the protective sheath that neurons live in—basically, myelin sheaths do for neurons what telomere caps do for DNA).

Behold: How To Rebuild Your Neurons’ Myelin Sheaths ← this is an article about phosphatidylserine’s role in that process

The health of our myelin is important, because as well as protecting the neurons, the myelin also insulates them—remember that in essence, nerves (made of neurons) are a lot like electrical wires, and they can absolutely be shorted out, misfired, etc, and myelin is a large part of what keeps that from happening (provided everything’s working as it should).

Consequently, demyelination is considered an issue partially responsible for the ill effects of several degenerative diseases, with multiple sclerosis (MS) being high on the list.

So, how do psychedelics help?

Psychedelics, myelin, and you

Regular readers may recall our articles about psychedelics and mental health, such as:

Taking A Trip Through The Evidence On Psychedelics

…and also:

Psychedelics: Yes Even Once?

…which has to do with the lasting benefits of a single dose of a psychedelic compound. How lasting, you wonder? Well, there’s nuance to the answer, so you’ll need to read the article for that, but “a surprisingly good while”.

Now, most recently, researchers (Dr. Mehmet Bostancıklıoğlu et al.) found that psychedelics can support long-term PTSD recovery by promoting myelin repair and (with it) reorganization of brain networks.

Why this matters in PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder involves not just strongly encoded unpleasant memories, but also disrupted timing and coordination across brain circuits, particularly in memory-related regions like the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. And that’s “how it gets you”, in terms of the brain not really fully accepting that the Bad Thing™ is in the past, and that you are safe now, even if intellectually you know these things. It can sound like psychobabble or (more charitably) therapy talk, and in a way it is that latter, but there’s also some very clear neurology going on here, as this study elucidates.

What Dr. Bostancıklıoğlu and his team found is that low repeated doses of psilocybin and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) caused changes in oligodendrocytes (the cells that produce myelin) and multi-omic genetic signatures that are consistent with myelin remodeling, which gave the clue that that repairing neuronal insulation (i.e., the myelination) could help stabilize healthier circuit dynamics after psychedelic treatment.

Not liking to leave hypotheses untested, the team did find causation, not just correlation:

• Experimenting on rats, the researchers experimentally damaged myelin, finding that the anxiolytic effects of psilocybin and MDMA disappeared, while improving myelination supported recovery, showing that intact myelin was required for behavioural improvement.
• Next up, they blocked the serotonin 5-HT2A receptors, which prevented both behavioural benefits and myelin-related changes, showing that classic psychedelic receptor pathways are necessary for these structural effects too.
• Lastly, they found that using anisomycin to block fear-memory formation reduced anxiety but did not repair myelin, showing that mere symptom suppression (however potentially beneficial as an end in itself) differs from the true biological recovery that this provides.

In other words, it not only works (which we already somewhat knew, by virtue of studies such as those we talked about in our “Taking A Trip Through The Evidence On Psychedelics” article), but also, we now know how it works too.

Which is useful, because:

• understanding how it works helps us to help it to work better
• understanding how it works will promote more research
• understanding how it works will help improve accessibility*

*because, for example, health insurers find it harder to say no, the more strongly evidence-based a treatment is, and also doctors will be quicker to sign prescriptions for things that are well-understood.

You can read the paper in full, at: MDMA and psilocybin regulate oligodendrocyte-lineage cell numbers and anxiety-like behaviors in a rat model of fear

Want to learn more?

For more comprehensive brain-rebuilding advice, check out:

Building Your Brain At Every Age ← for a more multimodal approach, because after all, why rely on just one thing?

And for more on psychedelics specifically, you might like this book we reviewed a little while back:

Psychedelics and Psychotherapy – Edited by Dr. Tim Read & Maria Papaspyrou

Take care!