Psychiatrist and founder of Associação Cruz de Ankh, São Paulo
Marcos Lago is a psychiatrist in private practice in São Paulo, registered with the São Paulo medical council as CRM-SP 81.787 with the specialist registration RQE 72.835.[1] He trained at the University of São Paulo, holds a master's degree in neuroscience and behaviour, and did further clinical training at Stanford University School of Medicine and at the universities of Würzburg and Freiburg in Germany.[1] His consulting practice is integrated psychiatry: mood, sleep, cognition, sexuality, medication and laboratory results assessed together before any one of them is treated.[1]
He works at the join between psychiatry, consciousness, contemplative practice and spirituality.[2] Separately from his medical practice he founded Associação Cruz de Ankh, a Brazilian religious and philosophical association registered in São Paulo in March 2025 and dedicated to philosophical inquiry, spirituality, self-knowledge and the study of consciousness.[2][3] He states in writing that the two are not the same activity, and that approved medical treatment, scientific research, private psychiatric care, and philosophical or religious practice "are not interchangeable categories".[2]
In May 2026 he was corresponding author on a case report in Frontiers in Neuroscience describing transient multidomain functional improvement in a woman in her eighties with advanced Alzheimer's disease following administration of high-dose psilocybin-containing mushrooms.[4] The paper drew international coverage.[1] His stated position on it is that it documents an unusual clinical observation and generates a research hypothesis, and that it is not a treatment recommendation.[2]
Marcos consults in São Paulo and takes private patients only.[1] The published structure is a sixty-minute first consultation followed by thirty-minute reviews, with a deposit against the appointment.[1]
He does not sort a presentation into psychological or hormonal before examining it. Mood, sleep, cognition, sexuality, current medication and laboratory results are assessed as one picture, and treatment follows from that.[1]
Marcos read medicine and completed a psychiatric residency at the University of São Paulo, holds a master's in neuroscience and behaviour, and carries the specialist title from the Brazilian Psychiatric Association.[1][5] His training abroad was at Stanford University School of Medicine and at the university clinics of Würzburg and Freiburg.[1]
He holds the specialist registration RQE 72.835 in psychiatry.[1] A São Paulo practitioner listing carries the same council number under the fuller name Marcos Lago Cortes de Campos Filho and records a second specialist registration, in ophthalmology, alongside the psychiatric one.[5]
Associação Cruz de Ankh is a Brazilian association registered in São Paulo on 13 March 2025 under the classification for the activities of religious or philosophical organisations.[3] Marcos describes it as dedicated to philosophical inquiry, spirituality, self-knowledge and the study of consciousness.[2]
He has said he has supervised approximately four hundred sessions involving around two hundred adult participants, and that most of those people came to a philosophical and contemplative framework built around self-knowledge, meditation, personal meaning and the examination of consciousness, and were not seeking medical treatment.[2]
Psilocybin and psilocin are proscribed substances under Brazilian health regulation, and psilocybin is not an approved treatment in Brazilian medicine.[2][4] The association understands its ceremonial and philosophical activity within the constitutional protection of freedom of conscience, belief and religious liturgy, and he states that this is not a blanket or legally uncontested exemption.[2] He draws the line between his conventional psychiatric work and the association's activity, saying the two "overlap in intellectual interests, but they should not automatically be described as the same type of practice".[2]
The paper, published on 28 May 2026 in the neuropharmacology section of Frontiers in Neuroscience, reports a single patient: a woman in her eighties, some ten years after an Alzheimer's diagnosis and five years into marked functional impairment, with predominantly monosyllabic speech, chronic urinary incontinence, dependent mobility and severely reduced spontaneous communication.[4] Following administration of high-dose psilocybin-containing mushrooms, the authors record spontaneous autobiographical speech emerging about nineteen hours later, and over the following days improvements in alertness, independent walking, dressing, social reciprocity and continence, with continence persisting at follow-up.[4] No severe or persistent adverse effects were reported.[4]
Marcos's co-authors are Mariana Cerveira and Joe Xavier Simonet, and all three list the same affiliation, the medical department of Associação Cruz de Ankh.[4] Simonet is the patient's son and legal guardian, and he raised the possibility of psilocybin in the first place; the decision was taken after discussion with the guardian and those responsible for her care, and written informed consent for publication came from the guardian.[2][4]
The paper states its own limitations. It is a single case with no control, no standardised cognitive scales, no neuroimaging or biomarker confirmation, and no blinded independent assessment, and the authors write that causality cannot be established and that spontaneous fluctuation in neurodegenerative disease cannot be excluded.[4] They write that the findings should not be read as reversal of Alzheimer's pathology, and that they raise the possibility that latent functional capacities persist in advanced neurodegeneration and become temporarily accessible under specific conditions.[4] Independent commentary has made the point that a single case report is the weakest form of clinical evidence and that psilocybin carries real risk in frail older adults.[6]
Asked about the reception of the paper, Marcos said the response was broader and faster than he expected, and criticised coverage that confused the weight of dried mushrooms with the dose of purified psilocybin, exaggerated the conclusions, or treated the case primarily as a provocative anecdote.[2] He has said that neither enthusiasm nor rejection should replace evidence, and that both uncritical enthusiasm and automatic dismissal are scientifically unhelpful.[2]
The appropriate next step, in his view, is formal prospective research under ethical and regulatory oversight, beginning with safety and feasibility, using standardised preparations, objective cognitive and functional measures, independent assessment, longer follow-up and, where possible, neuroimaging and biological markers.[7] He states that he is not recruiting for a trial and is not offering an established treatment protocol, and that families and patients should not read the report as a recommendation for unsupervised use.[2][7]
Marcos is the author of a book on consciousness, neuroscience and inner transformation, published as a free digital edition and distributable in full provided authorship is credited, the text is unaltered and no commercial use is made of it.[1] Its stated intention is to remind, not to teach.[1]
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Entry 300114