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A Woman With Alzheimer’s Spoke in Full Sentences After Taking Psilocybin, Case Study Says

Researchers caution it’s only one case, but the report raises questions about whether psilocybin could restore dormant brain functions.

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Psilocybin spent years as a maligned substance, better known for counterculture trips and moral panics. But its image has undergone a makeover in recent years as researchers around the world have studied its potential to ease depression, PTSD, anxiety, and addiction. Now, according to an incredible case study published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, it may have done something that sounds almost impossible: help a woman with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease speak for the first time in years.

The report is centered on a Japanese-American woman in her 80s whose Alzheimer’s had progressed for a decade. For around five years, she communicated mostly in single syllables. She needed........

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