Another “No Shit Sherlock” study..
Psilocybin, the psychedelic drug found in magic mushrooms, can affect the way we emotionally respond to music, a study by Danish scientists has found.
The drug has previously been used with some success in clinical trials designed to treat depression. These trials typically involve the use of music playlists to support the psychedelic experience.
Previous studies have also found that LSD, another psychedelic drug, can enhance the emotional responses triggered by music, so the team wanted to find out if psilocybin had a similar effect.
To test this, the team had 20 healthy participants listen to a short programme of music comprising Elgar’s Enigma Variations, and Mozart’s Laudate Dominum, before and after taking a controlled dose of psilocybin. After each play through they had them rate their emotional responses according to the Geneva Emotional Music Scale – a questionnaire designed to capture the richness of musically evoked emotions by rating the response in categories such as wonder, transcendence and peacefulness.
They found that the psilocybin increased the participants’ reported emotional response to the music by an average of 60 per cent.
“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,” said lead researcher Dea Siggaard Stenbæk, Associate Professor University of Copenhagen.
“Psilocybin is under development as a drug to treat depression, and this work implies that music needs to be considered as a therapeutic part of the treatment.
“Interestingly, some of the music we used, Elgar’s famous ‘Nimrod’ variation (the 9th variation) describes his close friend Augustus Jaeger. Jaeger encouraged Elgar to write the variations as a way out of depression, so we’re pleased to see it used again to help understand more about mental health.”
The team now plan to investigate the effect of music on the brain while under the influence of psilocybin using an MRI scanner.
“This is further evidence of the potential of using music to facilitate treatment efficacy with psychedelics,” said psychedelics researcher Professor David Nutt of Imperial College, who was not involved in the research. “What we need to do now is optimise this approach probably through individualising and personalising music tracks in therapy.”
