The Beckley/Sant Pau Research Programme, in collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid, releases remarkable findings from their latest study investigating the potential of ayahuasca to promote neurogenesis: the development of new cells. The investigators believe that these findings will open up a new avenue of research that may help develop drugs to treat diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s which are unfortunately highly prevalent in modern societies.
Preliminary data was presented by lead investigator, Dr Jordi Riba, at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research in Amsterdam this weekend. Results showed that two compounds — harmine and tetrahydro harmine — commonly found in the Amazonian hallucinogenic tea ayahuasca, potently stimulated the transformation of stem cells into new neurons.
For many years it was thought that the doesn’t make neurons during adulthood. In the 1990s, research changed this dogma showing that new neurons are generated throughout adult life in two regions of the human: the area around the ventricles and in the hippocampus.
The hippocampus plays a key role in memory. Its function declines with age and in neurological disorders. Under normal conditions, the rate of birth of new neurons is very low, and it cannot keep up with the rate of neural death that occurs in diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
The study was conducted at Sant Pau Hospital Barcelona in collaboration with the Beckley Foundation and researchers at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid: Jose
Dr. Riba has been studying ayahuasca for twenty years. Ayahuasca is a potent hallucinogenicused by shamans in the Amazon for centuries for medical and spiritual purposes. Obtained from a mixture of jungle plants, its popularity around the world has hugely increased in recent years, as an aid to spiritual exploration, psychotherapy and healing.
Amanda Feilding says, «The images from the Beckley/Sant Pau collaboration showing the birth of new neurons are very interesting and suggest that ayahuasca could lead to a new approach in the treatment of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, among others.»
Figure 1. This is the control slide, where stem cells have been treated with saline (salty water) for a few days. Very few of these cells (their nuclei stained in blue) have developed into young neurons (stained geen).
Figure 2. This shows the results after several days of treatment with harmine - blue is still present because it's a marker of cell nuclei, and all cells have nuclei (stem cells and neurons). The green spots are the young neurons. The red spots show more mature neurons
Figure 3. This shows the results obtained after several days of treatment with tetrahydro -harmine: blue is the marker of the cell nuclei (both neurons and stem cells), the green spots are the young neurons and the red spots show more mature neurons.
