In brief
- The University of California, Berkeley, has launched PLASTICITY, the first neuroimaging trial to study psilocybin specifically in healthy older adults.
- The study administers a single synthetic dose, ranging from 1 to 30 mg, to adults aged 60 to 85, comparing brain changes via MRI before and after the session.
- According to the research team, people over 65 have accounted for barely 1.4% of participants in modern psychedelic research to date.
The Center for the Science of Psychedelics at the University of California, Berkeley, has begun dosing the first participants in PLASTICITY (Psychedelic Longitudinal Aging Study in Cognitively Healthy Adults), a clinical trial investigating whether a dose of psilocybin can influence brain structure and function during normal aging, outside of any disease context.
A glaring gap in psychedelic research
The vast majority of psilocybin trials published over the last decade have focused on middle-aged adults with depression, anxiety, or addiction, almost entirely excluding older people. The Berkeley team cites a review indicating that those over 65 have made up just 1.4% of total participants in modern psychedelic studies, even though this group is precisely the one that could benefit most from compounds capable of stimulating brain plasticity—the brain’s ability to form and reorganize neural connections. The initial hypothesis is supported by previous animal research, where psilocybin has been shown to increase the number of synaptic connections in the hippocampus, a region key to memory that typically deteriorates with age.
What the PLASTICITY trial measures
The study, registered on ClinicalTrials.gov under identifier NCT06367738, is recruiting healthy adults between 60 and 85 years old to receive a single dose of synthetic psilocybin between 1 and 30 mg, a range spanning from a microdose to a moderate-high dose. During a two-month follow-up period, the team—led by predoctoral researcher Tyler Toueg alongside neuroscientists Michael Silver and William Jagust, psychologist Dacher Keltner, and psychiatrist Brian Anderson—is combining diffusion MRI to observe hippocampal microstructure, functional MRI during memory tasks, and cognitive, perceptual, and emotional processing tests, in addition to questionnaires regarding the subjective experience. “Older adults have been almost completely excluded from modern psychedelic research, even though they could benefit significantly from compounds that promote brain plasticity,” Silver stated.
What it implies
PLASTICITY has just begun, and there are no results yet: for now, one can only speak of study design, not proven efficacy. Its value lies in opening a path of research that has been historically neglected and in providing safety and tolerability data for an age group with metabolic and cardiovascular health profiles different from the younger adults typically seen in these trials. It is worth remembering that the plasticity observed in animals does not guarantee equivalent cognitive benefits in humans, and any extrapolation to a preventive or therapeutic use for aging is, at this point, premature. As with the rest of psychedelic research, harm reduction involves separating media hype from what the data actually shows, and recognizing that trials like this are only the first step in a long process before they can be translated into any clinical recommendation.
Source
- Berkeley News. Tripping into old age: Can psychedelics protect the aging brain?. UC Berkeley, June 8, 2026.
Educational content written from a harm reduction perspective and with respect for individual freedom. It is not a substitute for advice from a healthcare professional and is not intended to encourage or condemn any drug use.
