A Rat Study Found LSD, Psilocybin, and 2C-B Light Up Completely Different Brain Regions
We just came across this one — published August 3 in Nature Communications, so not breaking, but worth surfacing. Researchers at the University of Southern Denmark, led by Mikael Palner and Frederik Gudmundsen, used PET scans to track brain activity in rats given LSD, psilocybin, and 2C-B, both during the acute trip and a week later. The three drugs didn't converge on one shared pattern the way "classic psychedelic" as a category might imply: 2C-B mainly hit reward-related regions, LSD hit areas tied to habit and motivation, and psilocybin stood out for hitting emotion-processing regions specifically. If this replicates in humans, it's a real argument against treating psychedelics as interchangeable for a given condition — the right compound may depend on which circuit actually needs to change.
Read at University of Southern Denmark / Nature Communications