If this is a real phenomenon, then it's amazing to think that at least some of the people who suffer from Alzheimer's still have their memories inside their minds, as opposed to the disease erasing the memories from existence, which means that an effective treatment might recover their identities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_lucidity

Even more interesting, Dr. Radin discussed one of his companies is working on a new drug that uses the same brain receptors as psilocybin, that has the potential to induce similar effects (with no psychedelic side effects) with a nasal delivery system that crosses directly into the brain. The benefit of that, he says, is the effect would last for much longer, months perhaps, and patients would only have to take it a few times per year.

That said, some relevant context here is that:

(1) Case studies are some of the most easily fabricated journal outputs

(2) This is published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, which is listed by some as being a predatory journal [0]. The Frontiers publishers are the fine folk who published an AI generated anatomical figure of a rat that not only was obviously incorrect to anyone you'd stop on the street, it'd give them nightmares [1].

So I'm not saying this paper is bunk, but that I reserve a healthy degree of skepticism pending some clinical trials or replication in animal models.

[0] https://www.predatoryjournals.org/news/list-of-all-frontiers...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/scientists-aghast-at...

Ethics statement

Ethical approval was not required for this single case report conducted in routine private clinical practice, in accordance with local legislation and institutional requirements. No experimental protocol or prospective research procedures were conducted. Written informed consent was obtained from the patient’s legal guardian for the publication of this case report.

It’s a case report (n=1) that a group of 3 people from Brazil wrote up and pushed into the publishing world. The report is full of big words and tables, but barely says anything more than the abstract: It’s basically “an 80 year old Japanese women received mushrooms and was better afterward” expanded with as much medical jargon as they could apply without accidentally getting too specific. No mention of how the Alzheimer’s disease history was documented or diagnosed or even if she was a patient of one of the authors.

I’m surprised how much it’s getting people to let their guard down and accept the result. Normally when studies get posted with only 100 to 500 participants the comments everywhere are full of doubters calling out the small sample size. For some reason this n=1 story written vaguely about extraordinary claims with a complete absence of pre-treatment documentation or standardize testing/scoring hits all the right notes to convince a lot of people that mushrooms can reverse Alzheimer’s disease.

I know it’s something that a lot of people would like to be true, but this is a domain where anyone in the world can make any claims they want and find a journal who will publish it if you pay them. People write and publish papers like this all the time claiming to have treated major diseases in a single patient or group of patients with different drugs or herbs.

> pay to publish journal

> no clear Alzheimers diagnosis ("[...] were considered clinically most compatible with advanced Alzheimer’s disease")

> administration of a heroic dose of street-quality drugs vs. a controlled sample

> no university or hospital affiliation?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, hence I remain skeptical

People could use it as a treatment without having full mind blowing trips.

Meanwhile fentanyl is Schedule II. The government is often the biggest barrier to psilocybin research despite its positive effects being acknowledged for decades. Depending on the administration (which will sometimes signal they won't actually enforce the law) these research efforts are often terminated, meaning it is often safer/cheaper to just never start them in the first place.

https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3530

https://www.cato.org/blog/trumps-psychedelic-order-speeds-re...

I'm glad that psilocybin research is picking up. I really think its potential benefits deserve to be more widely known and available. Hopefully without the spontaneously appearing dysfunction though

> This case documents transient multidomain functional improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following psilocybin administration. The findings do not imply disease reversal but suggest that residual functional capacity may persist in late-stage neurodegeneration and may become transiently accessible under specific neuromodulatory conditions.

Very interesting nonetheless.

> One month after the initial session, the patient remained continent and functionally improved compared with baseline. A second supervised psilocybin session using 3 g was subsequently performed and was associated with greater verbal expressivity, improved facial mimicry, spontaneous humor, emotionally valenced autobiographical imagery, and increased agility while walking.

> The patient spontaneously stated: “It is pleasant to come here.

This is just wonderful.