Name Justo Gonzalo | Role Author | |
Justo Gonzalo Rodríguez-Leal (March 2, 1910 – September 28, 1986) was a Spanish neuroscientist, who described and interpreted what he called "central syndrome of the cortex" which is a multisensory disorder with bilateral symmetry, due to a unilateral parieto-occipital cortical lesion. In relation to this syndrome, the author described, among other disorders, the inverted perception disorder (visual, tactile and auditive) and the multisensory and motor facilitation. This phenomenon consists on the improvement of the perception of a given stimulus by the presence of another different stimulus of the same or another sensory system (crossmodal), and particularly by means of muscular activity or effort. He interpreted this syndrome by developing a model of brain dynamics based on neurophysiological studies of brain injury cases and biological principles of growth.The model emphasizes the functional unity of the cortex and offers a dynamic solution for the functional specializations of the brain by means of functional gradients through the cortex, and scaling laws. He received awards from the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) (1941), the Spanish Royal Academy of Medicine (Real Academia de Medicina) (1950), and the Spanish Society of Psychology (Sociedad Española de Psicología) (1958).
Contents
- Early years
- Spanish Civil War and post war period
- Subsequent years
- Last years
- Additional information
- Justo Gonzalos published works
- Works on Justo Gonzalos research work
- References
Early years
Justo Gonzalo was born and lived in Barcelona, Spain; then spent several years in Valencia, Spain; returned to Barcelona, and finally moved to Madrid, Spain, to study medicine, obtaining his bachelor's degree there in 1933. During 1933-35, he carried out studies at the Nervenklinik (mental hospital) of Vienna University, on clinical neurology and animal testing with Hans Hoff, and also on brain cytoarchitecture with Otto Pötzl, at Constantin von Economo's laboratory. During 1934–35 he carried out research on brain pathology with Karl Kleist at the mental hospital of the Goethe University Frankfurt, granted a scholarship by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (Council for the Extension of Studies and Scientific Research).
It was during this time that he wrote his first works.
Spanish Civil War and post-war period
After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), he resumed the neurological activities that he had already started at the then called Hospital General de Madrid, while conducting brain anatomoclinic studies at the Cajal Institute. He practiced war medicine in the Republican front (1937) until he was called in 1938 by Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora, head of the Center for Brain Injuries at Neurological Military Hospital of Godella (Hospital Militar Neurológico de Godella) in Valencia, where he stayed until the end of the war. During this period, he conducted detailed observations on numerous brain-injured subjects and performed, despite the extreme conditions, a fundamental part of his research. Some selected cases were carefully study in the course of several years (see below publications from 1945, 1950, 1952).
During the summer of 1938, he discovered, among other unusual disorders, the almost inverted vision of the war-injured patient that he called "case M", and in 1939 he characterized what he called "central syndrome of the cortex" which presented what he denominated "dynamical action phenomena". This syndrome, caused by a unilateral parietooccipital cortical lesion equidistant from the visual, tactile, and auditory projection areas, is a bilateral, symmetric and multisensory disorder, which presents dynamic phenomena like the disintegration of sensory qualities which are united in normal perception, but which are progressively lost when the intensity of the stimulus decreases, and partially recovered when the stimulus increases or by means of multisensory or motor facilitation. These phenomena were present in several disorders, in particular in the inverted perception disorder, which he studied in detail, specially the inverted vision and the tactile inversion disorders. He interpreted such a syndrome from a dynamic physiological point of view, where the disorder meets the conditions of the nervous excitability.
In 1941, he presented his first results to the Spanish National Research Council in a 94-page report titled Research on Brain Dynamics. The dynamic action in the nervous system. Sensory structures by brain synchronization (original title in Spanish: Investigaciones sobre Dinámica Cerebral. La acción dinámica en el sistema nervioso. Estructuras sensoriales por sincronización cerebral), which was awarded by this institution that same year. During 1942–44, he obtained, subsidized by the Cajal Institute, a more accurate quantitative assessment of the phenomena, in spite of difficulties in obtaining the most essential and necessary instruments for the experiments.
In 1945, the first volume of his book Research on the new Brain Dynamics. The brain activity as a function of the dynamic conditions of the nervous excitability (original title in Spanish: Investigaciones sobre la nueva Dinámica Cerebral. La actividad cerebral en función de las condiciones dinámicas de la excitabilidad nerviosa) was published. The book was dedicated to the visual functions. As his author pointed out in the book, the human brain activity was thus established on a physiological base, filling the gap, existing at that moment, between the brain pathology and the physiology of the nervous system, and establishing a continuity between the elementary or simple sensory functions and the most complex or superior ones, by considering that both are based on the same physiological bases. Apart from local references to this volume when it was published, there are some other salient ones,
mainly, for example, that of Bender and Teuber (1948):
Thus far, the American and English literature has failed to produce a monograph similar in scope to Gonzalo's Dinámica Cerebral which was based on experiments with brain injured casualties of the Spanish Civil War.
From 1942 until his retirement, Justo Gonzalo was a full-time member of the Spanish National Research Council. Beginning in 1945, he taught PhD-level courses in brain pathophysiology at the University of Madrid where he was head of the brain pathophysiology laboratory. In his PhD courses, he presented the results of his research in detail.
Subsequent years
In 1950 the second volume of Investigaciones sobre la nueva Dinámica Cerebral was published. The volume was dedicated to the tactile functions and the generalization of the concepts introduced in the first volume. Justo Gonzalo describes his 1946's observation of the tactile inversion and its interpretation. Thus, the author generalized the process of inversion in the "central syndrome" to all the sensory systems of spatial nature, corroborating it in the auditory system (1946) as he refers in his subsequent publication in 1952. Among the cases he studied, he described about 35 as "central syndromes" of different intensities, as is shown, for instance, in p. 78 of Annexe II ("Suplemento II") of the reprint of Dinámica Cerebral in 2010.
In the works published in 1951 and 1952, Justo Gonzalo set forth the idea of spiral development of the sensory field, as well as the scheme of the brain functional gradients through the cortex. He had previously described these concepts in the PhD courses. In these courses he also partially developed the concepts of dynamical similarity and allometry, applied to the aforementioned syndrome, understanding this as a result of a change of scale in the nervous excitability with respect to the normal case. He did not get to publish these concepts, which are partially collected in subsequent works [see "Suplemento II" and works of Gonzalo-Fonrodona (and Porras) in 1997, 2007, 2009 and 2014 (see below the section `Works on Justo Gonzalo's research work´)].
In 1952 he carried out a search in all the Spanish territory of patients with brain injuries. He selected more than 100 patients which were explored in Madrid. Most of them were from the Civil War.
Around this time, references to the contents of his book start to come out; the book quickly sold out and was never reprinted. Of special note is the reference to his research and the PhD courses that was made by a former student in a Cuban newspaper, as well as the comment that appears, in 1967, in a commemorative publication of the "Neurology Service of Nicolás Achúcarro":
M. Peraita prematurely dead, the only one dealing with neurological matters in Madrid is Justo Gonzalo, a clinician and researcher out of the common... (his) presence in the University as Professor of one of the Ph D courses' disciplines, is -with his original, updated, sharp course- the only encouragement to neurological vocations that has been present for years and years in the Faculty of Medicine of Madrid (Translation from the original).
In 1950, he received the prize awarded by the Spanish Royal Academy of Medicine, and in 1958 the Pilar Sangro award of the Spanish Society of Psychology.
After reorganizations in the Faculty of Medicine in 1966, he could no longer impart his PhD courses, mentioned above.
Last years
He continued to develop the concepts of similarity and allometry on the basis of the biological principles of development and growth, applying them to his research of brain dynamics and extending this formalization to the auditory system and the language. Part of that research is collected in Annexe II ("Suplemento II") of the 2010s reprint of Dinámica Cerebral as well as in some other works like those of Gonzalo-Fonrodona (and Porras) in 2007, 2009, 2014 (see below: `Works on Justo Gonzalo's research work´). He also approached multiple and varied subjects of Biology, Philosophy, Physics and Cybernetics, establishing connections with his research of brain dynamics (Dinámica Cerebral).
Around this time, the Dinámica Cerebral ("brain dynamics") of Justo Gonzalo is also referenced even from a philosophical point of view, awakening a special interest in the field of Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence.
His research was interrupted only because of his death, in 1986, in Madrid.
Additional information
After Justo Gonzalo died, studies related to the results from his research were carried out in the field of Artificial Intelligence. His works are also referenced in an historical and neurological sense (see also the section `Works on Justo Gonzalo's research work´`).
For example, worth mentioning is the comment:
Besides Santiago Ramon y Cajal, several authors can be considered founders of the Spanish Neuroscience and Neuropsychology such as Cubí, Simarro, Lafora, Gonzalo, Lorente de Nó. (Translation from the original)
Studies carried out in the 2000s have reported phenomena on tilted or inverted perception and multisensory integration that are similar to those described by Justo Gonzalo. Also, cortical modellings proposed are closely related to the model developed by Justo Gonzalo. Presentation and formalization of the work of J. Gonzalo in the current context is exposed in the works of Gonzalo-Fonrodona and Porras listed below in the section `Works on Justo Gonzalo's research work´.
In 2010, coinciding with the centennial of his birth, the Red Temática en Tecnologías de Computación Artificial/Natural (telematic network on artificial/natural computation technologies), together with the University of Santiago de Compostela, published a facsimile edition of the two volumes edited in 1945 and 1950 respectively, plus several annexes; the contents of Annex II ("Suplemento II") had never been published before. The whole, of about 1000 pages, is entitled Dinámica Cerebral (Open Access).