“There are many anecdotal and clinical reports which suggest that extract of psilocybin-containing mushrooms may have unique effects that are qualitatively and quantitatively different from chemical psilocybin, and also some preclinical studies. This observation has important clinical implications and we wanted to test it empirically in a laboratory study,” they said. So for the study, the researchers compared naturally-derived mushroom extracts to chemically made psilocybin, with the intention of discovering whether the other compounds within the extract can provide benefits that are not found when consuming isolated psilocybin.