Justo Gonzalo

Justo Gonzalo Rodríguez-Leal (Barcelona, Spain, March 2, 1910 – Madrid, Spain, September 28, 1986) was a Spanish neuroscientist, who described and interpreted a sensory disorder that he named "central syndrome of the cortex" (bilateral and multisensorial disorder) and developed a model of brain dynamics based on his neurophysiological studies on patients with brain injuries, using as a basis the biological principles of growth.^[1] 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 Psychological Society (Sociedad Española de Psicología) (1958).

Early years

Justo Gonzalo was born and lived in Barcelona, Spain; then spent a spell of several years in Valencia, Spain; and finally moved to Madrid, Spain, to study Medicine, obtaining his Bachelor's degree there in 1933. Granted a scholarship by the Council for the Extension of Studies and Scientific Research (Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas) he studied in the nervenklinik (mental hospital) of the University of Vienna (1933–34) on clinical neurology and animal testing with H. Hoff, on brain cytoarchitecture with Otto Pötzl at Constantin von Economo's laboratory, and on brain pathology at the mental hospital of the Goethe University Frankfurt (1934–35) with Karl Kleist. It was during this time that he wrote his first works.

Spanish Civil War and post-war period

After the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) broke out, he resumed the neurological activities that he had already started at the old Hospital General de Madrid (now San Carlos Hospital), while conducting brain anatomoclinic studies at the Cajal Institute. He practiced war medicine for the Republican front (1937) until, in 1938, he was called in by Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora, head of the Center for Brain Injuries at Neurological Military Hospital of Godella (Hospital Militar Neurológico de Godella) in Valencia,^[2] where he stayed until the end of the war. During this period, he conducted detailed observations on numerous brain-injured subjects, thus gathering fundamental input for his research, while working under extreme conditions. The group of interest included more than a hundred people who had sustained brain injuries due to the war. These he studied carefully, some of them in the course of 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 disorder, 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,^[1][3] particularly in the sense of sight and the sense of touch. He interpreted such 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 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 dynamic 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,^[4][5]

^[6][7][8][9] there are some other salient ones,^{[10][11][12][13][14][15]} mainly, for example, that of Bender and Teuber (1948):^[13]

"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 forth 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 developed the concepts of dynamical similarity and allometry, applied to the aforementioned syndrome, 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.

Around this time, references to the contents of his book start to come out^{[16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21][22]} 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,^[23] as well as the comment that appears, in 1967, in a commemorative publication of the "Neurology Service of Nicolás Achúcarro":^[24]

"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-date, 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).

Around this time, the Dinámica Cerebral ("brain dynamics") of Justo Gonzalo is also referenced^{[25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32]} even from a philosophical point of view, ^{[33] [34]} awakening a special interest in the field of Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence. ^[35]

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. ^{[36] [37] [38] [39] [40][41]} His works are also referenced in an historical^{[42][43] [44] [45] [46] [47]} and neurological sense.^{[48] [49] [50] [51]}

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.^[1]

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

• Kleist, K.; Gonzalo, J. (1938). "Über Thalamus- und Subthalamussyndrome und die Störungen einzelner Thalamuskerne; pp. 87–107". European Neurology 99: 87. doi:10.1159/000148664. 

• 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. (USC). 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 J. Gonzalo 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.

• Gonzalo, Isabel (1997). "Biological and Artificial Computation: From Neuroscience to Technology". Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1240. p. 169. doi:10.1007/BFb0032475. ISBN 3-540-63047-3.  |chapter= ignored (help)

• Gonzalo, Isabel (1999). "Foundations and Tools for Neural Modeling". Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1606. p. 94. doi:10.1007/BFb0098164. ISBN 978-3-540-66069-9.  |chapter= ignored (help)

• Gonzalo, Isabel; Porras, Miguel A. (2001). "Connectionist Models of Neurons, Learning Processes, and Artificial Intelligence". Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2084. p. 150. doi:10.1007/3-540-45720-8_18. ISBN 978-3-540-42235-8.  |chapter= ignored (help)

• Gonzalo, Isabel; Porras, Miguel A. (2003). "Computational Methods in Neural Modeling". Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2686. p. 94. doi:10.1007/3-540-44868-3_13. ISBN 978-3-540-40210-7.  |chapter= ignored (help)

• Arias, M; Gonzalo, I (2004). "La obra neurocientífica de Justo Gonzalo (1910-1986): el síndrome central y la metamorfopsia invertida" [The neurscientific work of Justo Gonzalo (1910-1986): the center syndrome and reversal metamorphopsia]. Neurología (in Spanish) 19 (8): 429–33. ISSN 0213-4853. INIST:16282035. 

• Barraquer, L (2005). "'Brain dynamics' of Justo Gonzalo in history". Neurologia 20 (4): 169–73. PMID 15891945. 

• Gonzalo-Fonrodona, I (2007). ""Inverted or tilted perception disorder". ". Revista de Neurología 44 (3): 157–165. 

• Gonzalo-Fonrodona, Isabel; Porras, Miguel A. (2007). "Physiological Laws of Sensory Visual System in Relation to Scaling Power Laws in Biological Neural Networks". Bio-inspired Modeling of Cognitive Tasks. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4527. pp. 96–102. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-73053-8_10. ISBN 978-3-540-73052-1. 

• Gonzalo-Fonrodona, Isabel (2009). "Functional gradients through the cortex, multisensory integration and scaling laws in brain dynamics". Neurocomputing 72 (4–6): 831. doi:10.1016/j.neucom.2008.04.055. 

• Gonzalo-Fonrodona, Isabel; Porras, Miguel A. (2009). "Scaling Power Laws in the Restoration of Perception with Increasing Stimulus in Deficitary Natural Neural Network". Methods and Models in Artificial and Natural Computation. A Homage to Professor Mira's Scientific Legacy. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5601. pp. 174–83. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-02264-7_19. ISBN 978-3-642-02263-0. 

• Gonzalo-Fonrodona, Isabel; Porras, Miguel A. (2011). "Scaling Effects in Crossmodal Improvement of Visual Perception". New Challenges on Bioinspired Applications. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6687. pp. 267–74. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-21326-7_29. ISBN 978-3-642-21325-0. 

• 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.

• Gonzalo-Fonrodona, I.; Porras, M.A. (2013). "Scaling effects in crossmodal improvement of visual perception by motor system stimulus". Neurocomputing 114: 76–79. doi:10.1016/j.neucom.2012.06.047. 

• Gonzalo-Fonrodona, I.; Porras, M.A. (2013). "Deficitary nervous excitability and subjective contraction of time: Time-dispersive model". Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) 7930: 368–375. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-38637-4_38. 

• Gonzalo-Fonrodona, I.; Porras, M.A. (2014). «Nervous excitability dynamics in a multisensory síndrome and its similitude with normals. Scaling Laws». In: Costa, A.; Villalba, E. (Eds.) Horizons in Neuroscience Vol. 13: Chap.10, pp. 161–189. Open Access.

References