Psychiatric News (5/7) reports, “A study involving brain scans of depressed patients treated with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) escitalopram or the psychedelic substance psilocybin is shedding light on how these compounds work differently to alleviate depression.” Researchers used fMRI to assess study participants’ brain activity at baseline and six weeks later. While both groups “experienced significant reductions in depressive symptoms and anhedonia at the end of treatment,” those who received escitalopram “showed a significant reduction in emotional responses to” all three types of facial expressions (fearful, happy, and neutral), while participants in the psilocybin cohort “showed no change in response to happy or fearful faces, and a slight increase in response to neutral faces.” Meanwhile, an exploratory analysis “suggested that symptom improvement in the escitalopram group was correlated with decreases in emotional intensity,” while “symptom improvement correlated with increases in emotional intensity” in the psilocybin group. The study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.