Tripping into Old Age: Can Psychedelics Protect the Aging Brain?

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026

Berkeley, CA – June 8, 2026

Written by Kara Manke for UC Berkeley News

In a new study, UC Berkeley researchers are investigating whether psilocybin can support healthy aging by boosting plasticity in the brains of older adults.

A new first-of-its-kind study at UC Berkeley is investigating whether psychedelics can help promote healthy aging. In the study, researchers use functional MRI, paired with other mental assessments, to measure the brain activity of older adults before and after a psychedelic experience. Credit: Brandon Sánchez Mejia/UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley doctoral student Tyler Toueg (left) and Professor Michael Silver (right) are two of the lead researchers on the study. Credit: Brandon Sánchez Mejia/UC Berkeley
The study is the first psychedelic neuroimaging study specifically focused on healthy older adults. In this re-enactment, Dr. Alia Lilienstein debriefs a participant at the research lab in Berkeley. Credit: Brandon Sánchez Mejia/UC Berkeley

Can psychedelics help our minds and brains stay healthy as we grow older?

That’s the question posed by a new first-of-its-kind study launched earlier this year at the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

The study, known as PLASTICITY (Psychedelic Longitudinal Aging Study In Cognitively Healthy Older Adults), is the first psychedelic neuroimaging study specifically focused on older adults. The study will use MRI and other measures to investigate how psilocybin impacts memory, perception, emotion, and brain structure and function in healthy adults between the ages of 60 and 85.

The researchers will test whether psychedelics can enhance neuroplasticity in the brains of healthy older adults, help them regulate their emotions, feel more socially connected, and experience a sense of awe. Previous work has shown that psychedelics can reduce negative mental states like depression, anxiety, stress and rumination, and that these negative mental states may be linked with accelerated aging, said Tyler Toueg, a UC Berkeley doctoral student in neuroscience who co-led the project’s design.

“There’s a lot of overlap between the mental states that psychedelics influence and those associated with successful aging,” Toueg said.

As populations age worldwide, cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease are becoming increasingly common, with significant consequences for individuals, families, and health care systems. Given this demographic shift and the rising burden of neurodegenerative disease, there is an urgent need for new strategies to promote successful aging.

Previous studies in non-human animals have shown that psilocybin increases the number of synaptic connections in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex of the brain. If psilocybin has the same effect on the human brain, it could help counteract the structural brain changes associated with aging.

“One of the things that I am most interested in is seeing whether we can actually measure those potentially beneficial brain changes in older adults,” Toueg said.

While thousands of people have received psilocybin in controlled research settings over the past several decades, older adults have been largely absent from modern psychedelics studies. A 2024 review found that older adults represented only about 1.4% of all participants.

“Older adults have been almost entirely excluded from modern psychedelics research, yet they may stand to benefit significantly from compounds that promote brain plasticity,” said Michael Silver, a professor of optometry and vision science and neuroscience and the faculty director of the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. “This study allows us to directly test whether the promising findings from animal models translate to older humans and to generate data that will inform future research on aging, cognition, and mental health.”

In the study, participants will take 1-30 mg of synthetic psilocybin, a compound found in psychedelic mushrooms. The researchers will collect a baseline assessment before each participant’s psychedelic experience. Then, they’ll repeat the assessment one week and one month after the experience to look for changes.

The assessments will include cognitive, perceptual, and emotion testing, as well as advanced brain imaging. The imaging includes diffusion MRI to measure the microstructure of the hippocampus — a part of the brain involved with memory and learning — and functional MRI to examine brain activity during memory encoding and retrieval. Participants will also undergo measures of visual perception and will complete surveys examining how subjective aspects of the experience relate to longer-term changes in well-being.

The study will also assess whether psilocybin can lead to sustained increases in vagus nerve activity when participants are experiencing positive emotions, like awe. Because vagus nerve activity is associated with better recovery from stress, it is a possible mechanism that could explain how psilocybin is related to mental health.

“One of the wonderful aspects of doing a study like this at UC Berkeley is that we are able to work with a broad array of experts — including emotion scientists and people who are experts in cognition and aging — to simultaneously study many facets of the enduring effects of the psychedelic experience,” Silver said.

The interdisciplinary project was designed by Toueg, a Ph.D. candidate in the neuroscience graduate program at Berkeley, along with faculty spanning neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry: Silver, a leading neuroscientist in the study of the human visual system in the brain; William Jagust, a prominent neuroscientist studying brain aging and Alzheimer’s disease; Dacher Keltner, a renowned psychologist on emotion, awe and well-being; and Brian Anderson, a psychiatrist at both UCSF and Berkeley’s psychedelics center, who is also acting as the medical director for the study.

If you would like to learn more about potentially being a research participant in BCSP neuroscience studies of human subjects, please email BCSPresearchsubjects@berkeley.edu.

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A Neuroscientist Describes Your Brain on Psychedelics in 101 Seconds

Posted on May 11, 2026June 5, 2026

Berkeley, CA – May 4, 2026

Written by Kara Manke and Charlotte Khadra for UC Berkeley News

Michael Silver wants to know what your brain looks like on psychedelics.

From Timothy Leary to Michael Pollan, countless psychologists, journalists and cultural leaders have documented the profound impact psychedelics can have on the human mind. And long before these substances became popularized in Western society, psychoactive plants were a key component in many Indigenous healing practices.

But underneath these mental states is a physical organ — the brain — composed of a tangled web of neurons and other cells that somehow work together to create these transformative experiences. As Silver explains in this 101 in 101 video, scientists still know very little about what exactly is happening inside the brains of people on psychedelics.

As the director of the BCSP, Silver is leading a team of researchers who are using brain imaging to uncover the “nuts and bolts” of how psychedelics work in the brain.

By collecting “movies” of the brain activity of people on psychedelics, they hope to link changes in brain activity with changes in perception. This detailed, mechanistic understanding of psychedelics and the brain could not only transform how we understand the human mind and consciousness — it could also lead to new and possibly more effective treatments for mental illness.

“A psychedelic experience in the right therapeutic context can result in enduring, maybe permanent changes in people… there have been studies in the lab environment where the majority of people rated it as one of the most profound and sometimes spiritually meaningful experiences of their lives,” said Silver, a professor of optometry and vision science and of neuroscience at Berkeley. “We believe that this kind of information will eventually be critical for improving well-being in society and reducing suffering.”

Watch more 101 in 101 videos featuring UC Berkeley faculty and experts here.

Exploring Consciousness and Psilocybin: UC Berkeley’s Historic Research into Visual Perception and the Brain

Posted on April 11, 2025April 11, 2025

by Andy Bui

Silver and his team. Photo credit: Brandon Sánchez Mejia – UC Berkeley

A UC Berkeley study is breaking new ground with a pioneering study that could change our understanding of visual perception, brain function, and the effects of psychedelics on the mind.

Led by Professor Michael Silver, an expert in visual perception, attention, and neuroscience, this study marks the first time in the history of the University of California, Berkeley that a psychedelic substance—specifically psilocybin—is being administered to human subjects.

A Passion for Vision Science and Neuroscience

Professor Michael Silver, a faculty member at UC Berkeley since 2005, has always been fascinated by how the brain constructs visual experiences. As the faculty director of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP) since its opening in 2020, his research delves into the psychological, physiological, and neurochemical mechanisms that shape human perception. Silver spoke about his childhood curiosity surrounding visual illusions, a curiosity that ultimately led him to pursue a career in neuroscience.

“Our experience of the world does not always match the state of the world,” said Silver.

While his research began with animal studies, Silver transitioned to human research over time, focusing on the cognitive factors that influence visual perception and associated brain activity. With the opening of the BCSP, funded by a generous donor, Silver and his team began to develop the infrastructure on campus necessary to launch a groundbreaking study on the effects of psychedelics on vision and brain function.

Psychedelics and the Brain: A Window into Consciousness

The novel study, which began in June 2024, seeks to explore how psychedelics like psilocybin—a naturally occurring psychedelic compound produced by mushrooms—impact human perception. Specifically, this study will analyze how psilocybin affects the brain’s use of past experiences, or “priors,” when processing sensory input. In the context of this study, priors are cognitive biases or expectations, based on regularly occurring patterns in the visual environment, that shape how we perceive the world. By combining sensory inputs with these priors, the brain constructs our visual experience. The study aims to examine how psychedelics might influence this process by potentially relaxing the influence of priors, leading to altered visual perceptions.

“Psychedelics have very distinctive effects on visual perception and hold great potential for experimental neuroscience to understand the mind, brain, and consciousness,” Silver said.

One of the theoretical frameworks guiding the research is the Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics (REBUS) theory, which suggests that psychedelics reduce the influence of rigid, entrenched beliefs, offering a chance to “reset” the brain. When combined with trained therapists, this approach has shown promise in therapeutic settings for treating mental health disorders such as PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Silver hopes to apply this theory to the visual system—utilizing current available knowledge of this system’s relationship to neuroscience studies.

Mapping Brain Activity in Real Time

The design of the study is as innovative as its concept. Participants will receive a dose of psilocybin while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. A non-invasive technique that measures brain activity by tracking blood flow and blood oxygen levels in real-time, fMRI scans show a dynamic story of brain function that allows researchers to observe how different regions of the brain respond to various stimuli or are engaged by different experimental tasks or cognitive states.

Analysis of fMRI imagery. Photo credit: Brandon Sánchez Mejia – UC Berkeley

For this study, participants will be shown visual stimuli that can be perceptually interpreted in two different ways. This setup will allow researchers to track when and how participants switch between these two interpretations: one that is more influenced by priors and beliefs, and another that is more based on direct sensory signals. The researchers will gain insights into how psychedelics affect the brain’s interpretation of visual information.

The team will also gather subjective data through both structured and open-ended surveys, which will be correlated with the brain activity data, allowing participants to narrate their personal experiences and the researchers to relate participants’ subjective experiences with their brain activity.

Overcoming Challenges: Regulatory and Scientific Hurdles

While the promise of the research is significant, the road to conducting this study has been paved with challenges. Psychedelics are still classified as a Schedule I controlled substance by the DEA, which adds regulatory complexity. Because psilocybin is a Schedule I compound, the FDA categorizes the study as a clinical trial, requiring rigorous oversight, record-keeping, and compliance with both federal and state regulations.

Silver’s team had to develop new protocols, training, and infrastructure to handle psilocybin, work with human subjects, and navigate the regulatory maze.

Another challenge lies in the inherent difficulty of isolating the effects of psilocybin. Expectation effects—how much participants anticipate the drug’s impact—can skew results. To address this, the study employs a blinded design in which neither the participants nor the researchers know what dose of psilocybin is being used for each session until after completion of the study. The BCSP team is also quantifying each participant’s expectations prior to any drug administration.

The Future: Insights into Mental Health, Vision, and Consciousness

Looking ahead, Silver is hopeful that this study will provide critical insights into the relationships among the mind, brain, and consciousness. Beyond adding to basic knowledge, he believes the study could have profound implications for mental health treatment. By understanding how psychedelics affect brain activity and subjective experience, researchers may be able to develop more effective treatments for conditions like depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Furthermore, the research could help counter misinformation about psychedelics by providing evidence-based, scientific insights into their potential benefits.

“The aim is to obtain insights about the relationships among the mind, brain, and consciousness,” Silver said. “Because the work has been suppressed for so long, there’s a lot of fundamental research that still needs to be done.”

Silver’s ultimate goal is to foster a deeper understanding of how psychedelics work in the brain, not only as potential therapeutic agents but also as tools for advancing our understanding of human perception and consciousness. Through this research, he hopes to contribute to the broader discourse on psychedelics and their role in medicine, all while emphasizing a grounding in scientific inquiry.

A New Era of Research at UC Berkeley

Silver’s study is a historic step forward in the fields of neuroscience, vision science, and psychedelics research. By exploring the effects of psilocybin on visual perception and the brain’s processing of sensory information, Silver and his team are opening the door to new understandings of consciousness, mental health, and the way our brains construct reality. As the study progresses, it could lay the groundwork for future therapeutic breakthroughs and help pave the way for a more nuanced and scientifically-informed conversation about psychedelics and their potential.