Trip or No Trip? The Diverging Development of Psychedelic Drugs for Mental Health

Over 50 clinical trials using psychedelic compounds to treat mental health conditions are ongoing, in part to explore how psilocybin, LSD and other psychedelics can increase connectivity between the brain’s various networks and accelerate new neuronal growth.1 As these promising drugs progress through the development pipeline, a key question remains outstanding with regard to the clinical relevance of their hallucinogenic properties. Is the ‘trip’ associated with psychedelics central to the brain’s rewiring? Scientists continue to investigate whether a similar effect could be achieved through a non-hallucinogenic derivative, and if so, what this would mean for drug development.