Bryan Johnson Ate 5 Grams of Mushrooms and Mapped His Brain. Here's What The Data Says

So Bryan Johnson - yes, the guy who's spending millions trying not to die and famously injects himself with his teenage son's plasma - just did something wild.

He took 5 grams of psilocybin mushrooms and tracked his brain activity in real-time using advanced imaging tech. And the data is kind of mind-blowing.

The Setup

Picture this: Johnson downs 5 grams of dried Psilocybe cubensis (the B+ strain, for the mycology nerds out there), which contained about 25 mg of psilocybin (actually quite low for 5g).

Then he straps on Kernel Flow sensors - think fancy brain-scanning headgear - and measures what's happening in his head at multiple points: during the peak, as he's coming down, end of the day, and the next morning.

Why would someone do this? Well, Johnson has a theory. He thinks that maybe the neuroplasticity and mental shifts from psychedelics could be as important for longevity as all the cellular stuff everyone's obsessed with. Telomeres, methylation, senescent cells... what if how your brain feels and functions matters just as much?

When the Mushrooms Kicked In

About 3-4 hours after taking them, Johnson's brain looked radically different. The imaging showed his prefrontal cortex dimmed. This is the part of the brain that plans, controls, and keeps you "adulting". Mushrooms effectively turned down the volume on his brain's control centre.

Meanwhile, his sensory and motor regions lit up like a Christmas tree. Auditory processing, speech areas, touch and movement centres became hyperconnected and firing. His Default Mode Network (that's the brain network associated with self-referential thinking, your inner narrator, the "you" that worries and plans) also started to quiet down.

What's especially interesting is that Johnson's subjective experience matched the brain scans. He reported feeling like his "consciousness was dialled up to 10/10." He became obsessed with staring at light refracting through water in a jar. Touch felt revelatory. Food tasted explosive. His brain wanted to "deploy its sensors into the world and discover all things."

It's like his brain regressed to a childlike state. But not in a bad way. More like that pure, curious, everything-is-new-and-amazing way that kids experience the world before they develop all their mental shortcuts and filters.

The Science Behind the Trip

Okay, so what's actually happening here?

Psilocybin converts to psilocin in your body, which then activates these receptors called 5-HT₂A serotonin receptors. These receptors are densely packed in the parts of your cortex that handle high-level thinking and sensory processing.

When they get activated, your brain basically goes from being a well-organised corporate hierarchy to being a chaotic startup. The rigid top-down control dissolves. Different brain regions that don't normally talk much start chattering away. Entropy increases, meaning your brain becomes less predictable, more flexible, and more exploratory.

The brain scans literally showed this. Johnson's connectivity maps during the trip matched almost perfectly with where 5-HT₂A receptors are densest in the brain. 

The Peak: Maximum Chaos

At the peak, Johnson's brain was in full exploratory mode. Sensory information that would normally get filtered out by your prefrontal cortex came flooding through. Everything became vivid, immediate, and significant.

He described experiencing touch "with awe." Music hit differently. He felt "hyper aware and hyper alive." The normal dulling that happens as we age, where life becomes a bit more muted and routine, that just vanished. Factory settings were restored, as he put it.

Interestingly, he didn't experience complete ego dissolution (that thing where people report feeling like they've merged with the universe and their sense of self completely disappears). He notes that might require a higher dose. At 25mg, his control centre was dimmed but not completely offline.

Coming Down: Making Meaning

Five hours in, things started shifting. The sensory hyperconnectivity intensified even more, but his prefrontal cortex began coming back online. And his Default Mode Network started re-emerging.

And his experience shifted from pure sensation to meaning-making. He moved from "wow, water is amazing" to deep philosophical reflection about mortality, AI, the future of human evolution. The raw experience started getting processed into insight.

This is a classic integration phase, when the brain starts organizsng all that chaotic sensory input into narratives and meaning.

The Afterglow

The next morning, his prefrontal cortex was still partially inhibited. His speech generation areas showed intensified connectivity. His senses remained sharper than baseline. And the Default Mode Network stayed partially suppressed.

Subjectively, Johnson felt calm, clear, emotionally open, and uninhibited. He felt more comfortable with self-deprecating humour. He had a burst of creative writing energy. This "afterglow" effect is well-documented with psychedelics, but seeing it mapped in brain connectivity is still pretty cool.

The Longevity Angle

Here's where Johnson's hypothesis gets interesting. There's solid data showing that mental well-being predicts longevity:

• Happiness in older adults correlates with 22% reduced mortality risk
• Optimism is linked to 35% fewer heart attacks
• Having a strong sense of purpose reduces mortality by 17%

And we know that treating depression with psychedelics can actually reverse biological age markers. The groundbreaking paper published in npj Aging in July 2025 shows that psilocybin slows cellular ageing and extend lifespan.

So Johnson's asking: what if periodically "resetting" your brain to a more flexible, curious, youthful state is as valuable for longevity as fixing your mitochondria or clearing senescent cells?

The idea is that ageing isn't just cellular decay. It's also the calcification of mental patterns, the narrowing of perception, and the dampening of curiosity. Essentially, the accumulation of filters and assumptions makes life feel more predictable and less vivid.

So maybe periodically dissolving those structures keeps you not just mentally younger, but actually helps you live longer.

The Bigger Picture

Johnson continues to measure his brain daily, tracking how these changes persist over time. He's essentially treating himself as a one-person clinical trial, which is very on-brand for him.

The data raises fascinating questions: How long do these neuroplastic changes last? Can you maintain a more youthful brain state with periodic psychedelic experiences? What's the optimal protocol?

But beyond the longevity angle, there's something poignant about the whole thing. Johnson describes the experience as dissolving his "aged numbness" and returning his perception to "factory settings." He's essentially saying: I forgot what it felt like to be fully alive, fully present, fully curious. And then, briefly, I remembered.

Whether or not mushrooms become part of the longevity toolkit remains to be seen. But watching someone map their consciousness in real-time while their brain temporarily becomes more childlike, exploratory, and open is fascinating.

And the fact that the subjective experience matched the brain scans so precisely is a powerful insight into the connection between mind and body correlation.

Pretty wild time to be alive.

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Quick disclaimer: This is not medical advice and we do not encourage anyone to break the law. Psilocybin is still illegal in most places, and psychedelics carry real risks. Johnson did this in a controlled setting with proper supervision.