TOW #9 "Magic Mushrooms" Article Post

I always wanted to go into a biological field when I grow up.  In order to better keep in touch with the science advances going on,  I am going to start reading more scientific articles.  Of course, some of those articles contain words that I would have to look up, then look up the words in the definition.  So, I'm starting small.  So, I went to my favorite search engine (google) and typed "science articles", which lead me to live science, and headed directly to an article about magic mushrooms.  Fungi have always been super interesting to me.  They function like plants, but eat dead things like bacteria and they produce some of the worst toxins known to man.  This article actually talks about the effects of mushrooms on the brain.  The drug "magic mushrooms"'s active ingredient, psilocybin, apparently changed the brain's connections, linking networks not normally connected.  This explains the "trippy" feel one gets when taking magic mushrooms

To help the average reader, like me, who might not understand all of the scientific terms, the article usually defines them for the reader.  For instance, the author writes "Psilocybin may create a brain state akin to synesthesia, a sensory effect in which one sense stimulus (such as a number) always gets paired in the brain with another (such as a color or a sound)".  Now, I know exactly what synesthesia is, so I can gain a greater understanding of the article.  Also, they article uses expert testimonial to gain ethos for their arguments. When talking about the connections made in the brain under magic mushrooms, the article quotes "study co-author Paul Expert, a physicist at King's College London".  Since the man they are quoting is both the study author and a physicist at a prestigious college.  It makes what the article is saying believable and credible.  I'm guessing a lot of scientific writing is building up credibility to successfully argue a point.  The article seemed to hint that psilocybin might be useful in treating depression.  That could be a real world application of the knowledge listed.  I guess science articles usually present the fact, then apply the knowledge to the real world.  I will definitely look for these in the nest article I read.

http://www.livescience.com/48502-magic-mushrooms-change-brain-networks.html