Original title: LSD treatment affects working memory-related brain function in patients with major depressive disorder
Friederike Holze, Kristian Larsen, Brice Ozenne, Gitte M. Knudsen +6 · October 2026
People with depression often experience problems with memory and focus. In this trial, 43 patients with depression took either very low doses or high doses of LSD four weeks apart. One week after the final dose, researchers scanned their brains while they performed a working memoryThe brain's temporary mental workspace used to hold and update information for immediate tasks. test. Patients who took high doses showed much stronger brain activation during the memory task than those on low doses. Interestingly, this brain boost did not match up with changes in their depression symptoms, meaning memory circuits and mood recovery might work through different paths.
You are juggling three balls in your backyard. When you are completely exhausted, keeping track of where the balls land feels heavy and sluggish. Taking a strong cup of coffee suddenly makes your hands and eyes snap to attention, tracking the rhythm much faster. Here, the sluggish juggling is the struggling working memory seen in depression, and the coffee boost represents the high dose of LSD waking up the brain regions needed to track the task.
People with major depression often struggle with thinking and memory, not just low mood. Psychedelics are being studied to treat depression, but we know very little about how they affect the brain's cognitive systems. This work shows that LSD can change working memory brain circuits, but these brain changes happen separately from whether a patient's mood improves.
The abstract notes only 43 patients were studied, brain scans were measured roughly one week after treatment rather than across a longer timeline, and the observed brain changes did not correlate with actual improvements in depression symptoms.
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LSD treatment affects working memory-related brain function in patients with major depressive disorder — Friederike Holze, Kristian Larsen, Brice Ozenne et al. — Translational Psychiatry — doi:10.1038/s41398-026-04522-4
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.