This book expounds on the formative role that the social environment plays in healthy brain development, especially during infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Based on scientific findings, the book advocates for bold measures and responsible stewardship to combat child abuse, maltreatment, and child poverty. By bringing together insights from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and social education work, it lays out a fact-based, transdisciplinary endeavor that aims at rising to the societal challenge of providing a rewarding perspective to youth at risk. It will be a valuable resource for academics from social education, pedagogy, cognitive science, neuroscience, as well as professionals in the fields of social work, pedagogy, education, child welfare.
Isabella Sarto-Jackson is a neurobiologist, executive manager of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, and president (2022 - 2023) of the Austrian Neuroscience Association. She holds a Master’s degree in genetics and a PhD in neurobiochemistry. For more than a decade, she has worked as a neuroscientist at the Center for Brain Research of the Medical University in Vienna. She has since extended her research focus to cognitive science and evolutionary biology and gives lectures in cognitive science at the University of Vienna and cognitive biology at the Comenius University in Bratislava. She is associate editor of the journal 'Biological Theory' (Springer Nature) and co-chair of the education committee of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology. Over the last years, she has dedicated a lot of effort to teaching neuroscientific findings to social education workers and social welfare workers by giving advanced training courses. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, i.e., being at the interface of neurobiology, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and social education. Her particular passion is advocating for children at risk and enabling equal opportunities for them in order to reach their full cognitive potential.