So not only did I create a fancy new website, I also decided to spice it up a bit more. *Intense drumroll* From now on I will do a bi-weekly news block to keep you updated on what awesome stuff has been discovered in neuroscience while we all were struggling through the week. On the menu this week: magic mushrooms and depression, what happens in your brain when you talk to God, and memory enhancement by brain manipulation.

1. Magic mushrooms have been shown to lift severe depression.

It's been too long since I talked about my favourite stuff, so here goes. Magic mushrooms, those versatile little miraculous plants, are in the headlines again, bringing psychedelic Renessaince closer yet (this sentence was even more enthusiastic before I edited it). This time a quite small study (involving 12 participants suffering from a treatment-resistant depression) showed that a little bit of psilocybin helped to lift resistant depression in ALL the volunteers and even kept the disease away for three months for five of them. That fits well with previous results of how a) the brain area implicated in self-reflection is hyperactive in depression causing rumination and negative thought cycles and b) how psychedelics basically shut it down. Of course, there a lot of caveats and still a long way to go, but looks like psychedelic drugs are paving the way for a whole new depression treatment.