Justo Gonzalo

File:Justo Gonzalo.jpg

Justo Gonzalo (1910-1986)

Justo Gonzalo Rodríguez-Leal (Barcelona, Spain, March 2, 1910 – Madrid, Spain, September 28, 1986) was a Spanish neuroscientist, who described and interpreted the syndrome that he called "central syndrome of the cortex" (bilateral and multisensorial illness) and developed a model of brain dynamics based on his neurophysiological studies of patients with brain injuries, and based also on the biological principles of growth. The model enhances the functional unity of the cortex and offers a dynamic solution for the brain localizations by means of functional gradients through the cortex, and the scale laws. He was awarded by the Spanish National Research Council (1941), by the Royal Academy of Medicine (1950), and the Spanish Society of Psychology (1958).

Early years

Justo Gonzalo lived in Barcelona, Spain until he began his studies of medicine in Madrid, Spain, where he obtained his bachelor's degree in 1933. Awarded a scholarship by the Council for the Extension of Studies and Scientific Research he studied in the nervenklinik (mental hospital) of the University of Vienna (1933–34) on clinic neurology and animal testing with H. Hoff, on brain cytoarchitecture with Otto Pötzl in the laboratory of Constantin von Economo, and on brain pathology in the mental hospital of the Goethe University Frankfurt (1934–35) with Karl Kleist. In this epoch he wrote his first works.

Spanish Civil War and post-war period

When the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) broke out, he went on his neurological activities that he had already begun in the General Hospital of Madrid (nowadays called Saint Charles Clinic Hospital), and he also carried out brain anatomoclinic studies in the Cajal Institute. He practiced war medicine in the republican front (1937) until, in 1938, he was called by Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora, head of the center of Brain Injuries (Neurological Military Hospital of Godella) in Valencia, where he stayed until the end of the War. During this period, he studied a great deal of brain injured people and he carried out a fundamental part of his research, in spite of the extreme conditions. He selected more than a hundred brain injured people from the war, who he studied carefully, some of them during several years.

During the Summer of 1938, he discovered, among other rare disorders, the almost upside-down vision of the war-injured person that he called "case M", and in 1939 he described what he called "dynamical action" and "central syndrome of the cortex". This syndrome, caused by a unilateral parietooccipital injury which is equidistant from the sight, touch, and hearing projection areas, is a bilateral, symmetric, multisensorial injury, which presents dynamic phenomena like the disintegration of sensory qualities which are united in normal perception, but which are progressively lost in these injured patients when the intensity of the stimulus decreases, and partially recovered when the stimulus increases or by means of multisensorial facilitation. Among such phenomena, he studied the inverted perception disorder, particularly in the sense of sight and the sense of touch. He interpreted such syndrome under 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 the Council that very year. During 1942-44, once he settled in Madrid and was subsidized by the Cajal Institute, he obtained a more accurate quantitative estimation of the phenomena, in spite of the difficulties to have 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 dynamimc conditions of the nervous excitability was published (original title in Spanish: Investigaciones sobre la nueva Dinámica Cerebral. La actividad cerebral en función de las condiciones dinámicas de la excitabilidad nerviosa). 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 a continuity between the elementary or simple sensory functions and the most complex or superior ones was also established, 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."

Since 1942 until he retired, Justo Gonzalo belonged to the Spanish National Research Council, full-time. Since 1945 he was Professor of Brain Physiopathology in the Ph D courses of Medicine in the University of Madrid where he was head of the brain physiopatology laboratory. In the Ph D courses he was setting out 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 of the reprint of Dinámica Cerebral (2010) (see below: Justo Gonzalo's published works).

In the works published in 1951 and 1952, Justo Gonzalo set out the idea of spiral development of the sensory field, as well as that of the brain functional gradients through the cortex. He had previously described these concepts in the Ph D courses. In these courses he also partially set out the concepts of dynamical similarity and allometry, applied to the syndrome told above, understanding this as a result of a change of scale with respect to that of the normal case. He did not get to publish these concepts, which are partially collected in subsequent works.

In this epoch occur the references to the contents of the book which was quickly sold out and was never reprinted. Special mention deserves the reference to his research and the Ph D 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 who takes care of neurological matters in Madrid is Justo Gonzalo, a remarkable doctor and researcher... (his) presence in the University as Professor of one of the Ph D courses' disciplines, is -together with his personal, up-to-dated, sharp, trajectory- the only encouragement to the neurological vocations that has been present for years and years in the Faculty of Medicine of Madrid".

In 1950, he received the prize awarded by the Royal Academy of Medicine, and in 1958 the Pilar Sangro award of the Spanish Society of Psychology.

Faculty of Medicine's reorganizations in 1966 caused that he could no longer impart his Ph D courses, mentioned above.

Last years

He went on developing the concepts of similarity and allometry based on the biological principles of development and growth, applying them to the brain dynamics (Dinámica Cerebral) and extending this formalization to the auditory system and the language. Part of that research is collected in Annexe II of the 2010s reprint of Dinámica Cerebral (see below: Justo Gonzalo's published works) as well as in some other works like those of Gonzalo-Fonrodona (2007, 2009) (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 the brain dynamics (Dinámica Cerebral).

In this epoch, 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.

Additional information

After Justo Gonzalo died, works related to his research's results were carried out in the field of Artificial Intelligence. His works are also referenced in an historical and neurological sense.

Along the 2000s decade, some phenomena have been referred, which are similar to those that Justo Gonzalo had described, related to the tilted or inverted perception and the multisensory integration, as well as modelling of the cortex has been made, which is closely related to Justo Gonzalo's postulates. It all is set out in the Gonzalo-Fonrodona works (2007, 2009, 2011) shown below (see: Works on Justo Gonzalo's research work).

In 2010, coinciding with his birth's centennial, the Red Temática en Tecnologías de Computación Artificial/Natural (telematic network on artificial/natural computation technologies), together with the University of Santiago de Compostela, carried out a facsimile edition of the volumes respectively edited in 1945 and 1950, plus several annexes, where the contents of Annexe II had never been published before, under the title Dinámica Cerebral.

Justo Gonzalo's published works

• Gonzalo, J. (1933). "Los factores endógenos en la corea de Sydenham". Archivos de Neurobiología XIII(4,5,6): pp. 1–15. ISSN: 0212-9329.

• Gonzalo, J. (1934). "Contribución al estudio del esquizoide". Archivos de Neurobiología XIV(6): pp. 1–17. ISSN: 0212-9329.

• Gonzalo, J. (1934). "Los tipos de motilidad. Contribución a la sistemática del movimiento." Archivos de Neurobiología XIV(1): pp: 1-23. ISSN: 0212-9329.
• Gonzalo, J. (1935). "Contestación al Dr. Nieto". Archivos de Neurobiología XV(3): pp. 417–421. ISSN: 0212-9329.
• Gonzalo, J. (1935). "Sobre la localización y fisiopatología del tálamo y del subtálamo". Archivos de Neurobiología XV(4): pp. 625–668. ISSN: 0212-9329

• Gonzalo, J. (1936). "Nuevos estudios talámicos. Síndrome talámico puro por degeneración secundaria". Archivos de Neurobiología. March. pp. 111–129. ISSN: 0212-9329

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• Gonzalo, J. (1945). Investigaciones sobre la nueva Dinámica Cerebral. La actividad cerebral en función de las condiciones dinámicas de la excitabilidad nerviosa. First Volume: 1-392. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Inst. S. Ramón y Cajal.

• Gonzalo, J. (1950). Investigaciones sobre la nueva Dinámica Cerebral. La actividad cerebral en función de las condiciones dinámicas de la excitabilidad nerviosa. Second Volume: 393-827. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Inst. S. Ramón y Cajal.

• Gonzalo, J. (1951). "La cerebración sensorial y el desarrollo espiral". Trabajos del Inst. Cajal de Investigaciones Biológicas XLIII: pp. 209–260.

• Gonzalo, J. (1952) "Las funciones cerebrales humanas según nuevos datos y bases fisiológicas. Una introducción a los estudios de Dinámica Cerebral". Trabajos del Inst. Cajal de Investigaciones Biológicas XLIV: pp. 95–157.

• Gonzalo, J. (1994). Brain Dynamics According to Human Data and Physiological Bases. (Summarized translation of the work published in 1952). Edited by I. Gonzalo and A. Gonzalo, Madrid. ISBN 84-604-9611-2

• Gonzalo, J. (2010). Dinámica Cerebral. Facsimile edition (Volume of 1945, Volume of 1950, Paper of 1952) with annexes. (1st ed. Annexe II). Santiago de Compostela: Red Temática en Tecnologías de Computación Artificial/Natural (RTNAC), Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. 13.shtml?cm_ven=Google&cm_cat=EC&cm_pla=ISBN&cm_ite=isbn%2084&gclid=CJCfvYjA6awCFUINtAod8ymmMA ISBN 978-84-9887-458-7. Free PDF available.

Works on Justo Gonzalo's research work

• Ballus, C. (1970). "La maniobra de refuerzo de J. Gonzalo y su objetivización por el test oscilométrico". Anuario de Psicología. Dep. Psicología, Univ. de Barcelona 2: pp. 19–28.
• Gonzalo, I.; Gonzalo, A. (1996). "Functional gradients in cerebral dynamics: The theories of the sensorial cortex". In Moreno-Díaz, R.; Mira, J. (Eds.) Brain Processes, Theories and Models. An international conference in honor of W.S. McCulloch 25 years after his death. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. pp. 78–87.
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• Arias, M; Gonzalo, I (2004). "La obra neurocientífica de Justo Gonzalo (1910-1986): el síndrome central y la metamorfopsia invertida". Neurología (in Spanish). 19 (8): 429–33. ISSN 0213-4853. INIST 16282035. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
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• Gonzalo-Fonrodona, I. (2007). "Inverted or tilted perception disorder". Revista de Neurología 44(3): pp. 157–165.
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• Gonzalo-Fonrodona, I. (2011). "Justo Gonzalo (1919–1986) y su investigación sobre dinámica cerebral". Rev. Historia de la Psicología 32: pp. 65–78. ISSN: 0211-0040.