What does the painter Théodore Géricault have to do with current science? What dark connections relate the genius of French Romanticism to the scientific method? Why have his portraits influenced the development of modern neurology? What has survived from those investigations from the post-Napoleonic era?

Javier S. Burgos will recount one of the sixteen stories from the book “Geography of Madness” (West Indies, 2020), recovering an event that takes us back to a moment in which science and history intertwine to try to understand the essence of our brain, and how it degenerates in the irreversible process of disease. And it is at that moment, when the embryo of psychiatry that has survived to this day is incubated, in a process that attempts to achieve the understanding of the organ that makes us human, and its exploration through art, by carrying out a primordial experiment that explored for the first time the ins and outs of the evolution of madness, and that recovers many of the essential questions about how the disease evolves, and the capacity that we sense we have to interfere in that journey that concludes with dementia and death.

In the February 2021 issue of The Lancet Neurology Burgos identifies a lost portrait by Géricoult "Portrait of a man. Homo melancholicus" belonging to a series of works commissioned by the psychiatrist Étienne-Jean Georget to portray ten of his patients. Until now, only five of these portraits were known, belonging to different museums in Europe and the United States.

After the talk by Javier S. Burgos, a debate will be opened on the book “Geography of Madness” with the participation of Javier Buceta, Isabel Fariñas and Juli Peretó. The activity can be followed online through the link:

https://go.uv.es/mUEpUS0

Javier S. Burgos Muñoz (Puerto de Sagunto, Valencia, 1971) has a degree in Biological Sciences - Biochemistry specialty - from the University of Valencia and a PhD in Sciences - specialty Molecular Biology—from the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has been a professor and researcher at several universities and research centers of excellence. He has developed his scientific career in the field of the etiology of Alzheimer's disease and in the development of new drugs against neurodegeneration. He has supervised three doctoral theses (one of them with an Extraordinary Doctorate Award from the Autonomous University of Madrid), has published fifty indexed scientific articles and appears as an inventor in ten transferred patents. In the field of management and senior management, he has been Scientific Director and General Director of the biotechnology company Neuron Biopharma. He has subsequently been Managing Director of the Foundation for Biosanitary Research of Eastern Andalusia (FIBAO) and of the Biosanitary Research Institute of Granada and of the La Fe Sanitary Research Institute. He is currently the General Director of Research and High Sanitary Inspection of the Valencian Community. In his facet of scientific dissemination, he collaborates by writing texts about science and giving talks on platforms such as Naukas, Jot Down or Desgranando Ciencia, among others. In 2019 he won the Jot Down – Formentor amateur journalism award, and in 2020 he won the first Jot Down prize for scientific fiction. His first book is Geography of Madness (West Indies, 2020).