NEWS


HEALTH Magic cure for depression JASMIN FOX-SKELLY


The psychoactive compound in psychedelic ‘magic mushrooms’ could pave the way for new drugs to treat depression, according to a new study. Patients in the study reported that their mood had lifted, they felt less depressed and were less stressed immediately after taking psilocybin. Nearly half (47%) were still benefitting five weeks after discontinuing treatment. Robin Carhart-Harris and his team at


Imperial College London, UK, gave psilocybin to 19 patients suffering from ‘treatment resistant’ depression, who had failed to benefit from other depression therapies (Sci. Reports; doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13282-7). They were given 10mg initially and 25mg one week later.


‘Several of our patients described feeling


“reset” after the treatment and often used computer analogies,’ said Carhart-Harris. ’Psilocybin may be giving these individuals the temporary kick start they need to break out of their depressive states.’


Functional MRI scans measuring activity


and blood flow in the brain showed marked differences after the treatment. There was reduced blood flow to areas of the brain, including the amygdala, which processes emotional responses, such as stress and fear. Another brain network appeared to ‘stabilise’


ENERGY e-diesel from air and water ERIC JOHNSON


In late 2018, German car giant Audi plans to open a shipping- container-sized plant in Laufenberg, Switzerland, to make 400,000 litres/year of ‘e-diesel’, a drop-in fuel replacement for petroleum. The demonstration plant will synthesise e-diesel from hydrogen – from electrolysed water – and carbon, from atmospheric CO2


. The hydrogen will come


from a water-electrolysis unit electrified by hydropower generated in the adjacent River Rhine. Carbon dioxide will likely be extracted from ambient air with an amine sorbent, similar to the technology employed


for carbon capture and storage (CCS). However, Audi says it might instead or concurrently take CO2


from biogas digesters.


The carbon and the hydrogen will then flow to a Fischer- Tropsch (FT) reactor supplied by process-engineering contractor Ineratec.


This will be Audi’s second


go at making fuel from water and air. In 2015, the carmaker debuted a similar, but far smaller plant in Dresden – built in partnership with German start-up Sunfire, which has expertise in water-electrolysis. Sunfire and other partners are also planning another, commercial e-diesel plant with 10m litre/year capacity,


scheduled to begin operations in 2020 next to a hydropower station in Porsgrunn, Norway, run by Norsk Hydro. The Laufenberg and Dresden


projects are the latest to follow a string of unsuccessful attempts to commercialise the technology over the past two decades. US Sandia National


Laboratories and a Shell-led consortium tried firing the FT-reactor with concentrated sunlight. High-temperature electrolysis, up to 850°C, has been the focus of others – including Sunfire, Syntrolysis Fuels and WindFuels in the US and Air Fuel Synthesis in the UK. Air Fuel Synthesis went into liquidation in 2016.


An Israeli company spun out of Ben Gurion University, New CO2


Fuels, is still on the


case. With a focus both on concentrated sunlight and high-temperature electrolysis, general manager, Yuval Levin says diesel from water and air has a technology maturity of five out of 10. The company says its e-diesel – and that of Audi – can be ‘competitive with current market prices… thanks to the very high efficiency’ of the process’. Audi declined to forecast


future market size, noting that while electric cars will play a big role in mobility, ‘we also need


synthetic fuels to reduce CO2 emissions’.


after treatment. ‘fMRI scans indicate that the


communication within a certain prefronto- limbic circuit known to regulate affective responsiveness, is normalised one day after psilocybin treatment,’ said Imperial College psychologist Tobias Buchborn. ‘This normalisation seems specifically related to the feeling of unity experienced during the psilocybin session.’


The trial didn’t include a control/placebo


group for comparison. However, the team plans to compare the effects of psilocybin against a leading antidepressant in a six- week trial in 2018. ‘These are exciting, but preliminary


findings,’ said Mitul Mehta, professor of neuroimaging & psychopharmacology at King’s College London. ‘It is only a single dose of psilocybin, but this was able to reduce symptoms and produce changes in the same brain networks we know are involved in depression. This impressive study provides a clear rationale for longer-term, controlled studies.’ ‘Some of the next challenges


are to see if the therapeutic effects hold up in larger groups,’ commented Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and computational


neuroscience at Sussex University, UK: ‘And to understand more about how the changes in brain activity elicited by psilocybin underpin both the transient changes in conscious experience the drug produces, as well as the more long-lasting effects on depression.’ The trial also backs up the results of an earlier study by Robin Carhart-Harris and coworkers in 2016, which found that psilocybin reduced symptoms in 12 treatment resistant patients, five of whom were no longer classed as depressed three months later. Also in 2016, a trial by other researchers in the US demonstrated that a single dose could alleviate the anxiety and depression of people with advanced cancer for six months or longer.


10 10 | 2017


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