Justo Gonzalo

After obtaining his bachelor's degree in medicine he specialized in Austria and Germany (1933–1935) with a grant from the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (Council for the Extension of Studies and Scientific Research), and subsequently carried out extensive research on human brain functions based largely on brain injuries from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).

He characterized what he called the central syndrome of the cortex (multisensory and bilateral disorder caused by a unilateral lesion in a parieto-occipital association area), which he interpreted based on physiological laws of nervous excitability and a model of brain dynamics where the cortex is conceived as a dynamic functional unit with specificity in gradation, providing a solution to the question of brain localization.

He belonged to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) from 1942 until his retirement, and he was lecturer of 21 PhD courses (1945–1966) on brain physiopathology at the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Madrid.

[1] The author also observed inverted perception in touch (1950)[1] and hearing (1952),[1] for none of which there were precedents, and generalized the inversion process in the central syndrome to sensory systems of a spatial nature.

For example, tactile and auditory stimuli, and in particular muscular effort, improve perception, partly compensating for the deficit of nervous excitation due to the loss of nonspecific (or multispecific) neuronal mass caused by the lesion.

For example, the visual field, which shows concentric reduction, increased up to 5 times in the most acute case, and the image recovered the correct orientation by means of a strong muscular contraction.

Gonzalo later developed the concepts of dynamic similarity and allometry applied to the central syndrome, this being understood as the result of a change of scale in the nervous excitability of the cerebral system with respect to the normal case.

During 1933–34, he carried out studies at the Nervenklinik (mental hospital) of the University of Vienna, on clinical neurology and animal testing with Hans Hoff, and also on brain cytoarchitecture with Otto Pötzl, at Constantin von Economo's laboratory.

During this period, he conducted detailed observations on numerous brain-injured subjects and performed, despite the extreme conditions, a fundamental part of his research.

In the summer of 1938, he discovered, among other singular disorders, near-inverted vision in the war wounded man he termed case M, and in 1939 characterized what he called central syndrome of the cortex, which exhibited peculiar dynamic phenomena.

In 1945, the Cajal Institute, now part of the Spanish National Research Council, published the first volume of his book on Brain Dynamics, mainly devoted to visual functions.

In the patient now under examination the phenomenon was provoked at will by progressive moving away a test object, or by decreasing the intensity of illumination, or by eccentric position in the visual field ... the book is an inexhaustible mine of singularities..." (translated from Italian), or the commentary by Bender and Teuber (1948):[16] "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".Also De Ajuriaguerra and Hecaen [17] refer in several pages to this research and emphasize (p. 279): "...let us also cite in Spanish the very important volume by J. Gonzalo" (translated from French).

He also received in 1945–46 letters of praises from authors such as H. Piéron, Robert Bing, D. Katz, W. Köhler (the last two in connection with Gestalt theory), G. Rodríguez Lafora, C. Jiménez Díaz, J. Germain, etc.

He finds a total of 35 cases with the same type of central syndrome of varying intensity, as shown for example on p. 78 of Supplement II of the reprint Dinámica Cerebral of 2010.

[1] In the PhD courses, which he taught with great vehemence and dedication, he also exposed the concepts of dynamic similarity and allometry applied to the aforementioned syndrome, this latter being understood as the result of a change of scale in the nervous excitability of the system with respect to that of the normal case.

[1][4] Among the many private comments he received from students about the Ph.D. courses, the one with a reference is indicated, [20] as well as the comment that appears, in 1967, in a commemorative publication of the "Neurology Service of Nicolás Achúcarro": [21] "M. Peraita prematurely dead, the only one dealing with neurological matters in Madrid is Justo Gonzalo, a clinician and researcher out of the common ... giving an original solution – the concept of gradients – to the problem of localization of the different functions in the cerebral cortex ... (his) presence in the University as professor of a PhD course, 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."

The cause of this was the author's own way of being, extremely self-demanding and who could not conceive of partial communications except for PhD courses, also great administrative difficulties, and with the passage of time, health problems.

In this context, in the doctoral thesis of the engineer A. Delgado directed by the physicist J. Mira, several of Gonzalo's ideas and data are considered to be basic, together with those of Lashley and Luria, in the functional organization of nervous tissue in relation to behavior.

For example, worth mentioning is the comment:[50] "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".

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.