by NPR’s Jon Hamilton

In the name of science, Dr. Nico Dosenbach had scanned his own brain dozens of times. But this was the first time he'd taken a mind-bending substance before sliding into the MRI tunnel.

"I was, like, drifting deeper into weirdness," he recalls. "I didn't know where I was at all. Time stopped, and I was everyone."

Dosenbach, an associate professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, had been given a high dose of psilocybin, the active substance in magic mushrooms, by his colleagues.

It was all part of a study of seven people designed to show how psilocybin produces its mind-altering effects.

The results, which appear in the journal Nature, suggest that psychedelic drugs work by disrupting certain brain networks, especially one that helps people form a sense of space, time and self.

Read the full article on NPR’s website here