Justo Gonzalo

Justo Gonzalo y Rodríguez-Leal (March 2, 1910 – September 28, 1986), was a Spanish neuroscientist who was born in Barcelona and died in Madrid. 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 described and interpreted phenomena such as inverted perception and multisensory and motor facilitation, among others. By applying concepts of dynamic similarity, he formulated and proved allometric power laws in the loss of functions and in the sensory organization. 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. He received awards from the CSIC (1941), the Royal Academy of Medicine (1950) and the Spanish Society of Psychology (1958). Provided by Wikipedia