Ethnobotanists, ethnopharmacologists, and ethnomicologists...?

Question

how is a substance used for its psychoactive properties isolated from a species? In the cases of species that have more than one psychoactive substance or where more than one species with different substances are used, how is this combination understood to affect the brain? Also, how is the line drawn between what makes a mushroom or fungi seperate species or merely separate strains?

Answer 1

The active substance is isolated by various processes of extraction and identification.  The mind is still poorly understood, and while the function of some chemicals is documented (tryptamine family mimics seretonin), multiple chemicals interacting gets more complicated (are you refering to psilocin and psilocybin in mushrooms or perhaps ayahuasca?).  Mushroom species classification is a fine line using nuclear large subunit rDNA and restriction fragment length polymorphism.