This blog post was written by Anthony Petrosino, Senior Research Associate and Director of the WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center.

WestEd’s Learning Innovations and Justice & Prevention Research Center teams gathered with WestEd executives recently to hear from a neuroscientist who has dedicated his life to learning more about the brain and its relationship with violence and aggression — and empathy and compassion.

The scientist is Dr. Jeremy Richman, PhD, an accomplished neuroscientist and the father of one of the children killed in the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, in 2012. Richman and his wife (Jennifer) established the Avielle Foundation in honor of their daughter to support his activities promoting and conducting research on the role of brain health in violence prevention, and educating the broader community about its importance.

The Avielle Foundation’s mission is “to prevent violence and build compassion in communities by fostering brain science research, community engagement, and education.”

I invited Dr. Richman to meet with the WestEd team because I saw some strong synergies between the work that he and his foundation are doing around violence prevention and education, and the work that we are doing at WestEd. After several years of research and evaluation projects in violence prevention, criminal justice, and school safety at WestEd, we recently established the WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center as the coordinating umbrella under which this new work would be organized. We collaborate with various organizations to conduct research and analysis in areas such as violence prevention, and to share our findings.

In our meeting with Dr. Richman, the WestEd team learned about the connections between the brain and behavior, and how subtle and not so subtle factors can influence brain health and lead to a greater proclivity toward violence and less toward compassion and empathy.

Dr. Richman highlighted a principal difference between the brain and other organs: that many of its functions are not discernible to scientists. His hope is that advances in brain science would make the “invisible visible,” and lead to discoveries that would help develop drugs and other treatments for brain illness.

He also talked about understanding the influences of nurturing and adverse childhood experiences, and the need to focus on the social emotional well-being of youth during the early stages of brain development.

Given our common goals and research priorities, WestEd and the Avielle Foundation have pledged to find ways to work together and continue the conversation about how to promote brain health and prevent violence.

Photo: Jeremy Richman (right) with Anthony Petrosino.