There has been a surge of interest in the use of psychedelics to treat difficult-to-treat depression and other mental health disorders.

Psilocybin, which naturally exists in a variety of mushroom species, is the most suited psychedelic for therapeutic development, in part because the psilocybin ‘trip’ can be completed within a workday, which is necessary for supervised clinical treatment. Psilocybin is typically taken in conjunction with psychological support and music in the treatment of depression.

Previous studies have reported that psychedelic LSD interacts with music, and for many people in the 1960s, psychedelics were inextricably linked to the sensation of music.

For the first time, a group of Danish scientists has demonstrated that psilocybin has an effect on how music evokes feelings.

The study included 20 healthy volunteers (half of whom were female) who reported emotional response to music before and after receiving psilocybin; 14 of these volunteers were also assessed after receiving ketanserin (ketanserin is an anti-hypertension drug, commonly used to as a comparison in psychedelic experiments).

Both drugs were administered randomly, and each subject was thus allowed to report on the effects of both psilocybin and ketanserin. Under the influence of medicines, volunteers listened to a short music programme and scored their emotional response during the drug’s peak effects.

The Geneva Emotional Music Scale was used to rate the emotional response to the music. A short programme including Elgar’s Enigma Variations Nos. 8 and 9, as well as Mozart’s Laudate Dominum, lasted approximately 10 minutes.

On findings, Lead researcher, Associate Professor Dea Siggaard Stenbæk, University of Copenhagen, said:

“We found that psilocybin markedly enhanced the emotional response to music, when compared to the response before taking the drugs. On the measurement scale we used, psilocybin increased the emotional response to music by around 60 percent. This response was even greater when compared to ketanserin. In fact, we found that ketanserin lessens the emotional response to music. This shows that combination of psilocybin and music has a strong emotional effect, and we believe that this will be important for the therapeutic application of psychedelics if they are approved for clinical use.”

Psilocybin is being developed as a medicine to treat depression, and this research suggests that music should be regarded as a therapeutic component of the treatment. Their next step will be to use an MRI to examine the effect of music on the brain while under the influence of psilocybin in data that they have already acquired.

Humans have been taking magic mushrooms for almost 6,000 years, according to evidence. Psilocybin was identified and produced for the first time in 1958 by Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman, who also invented LSD. An extensive early study into the medical uses of psychedelics was conducted, but this became problematic after the United States banned their usage in 1970.

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