June Cognitive Kit: PTSD Awareness Month
Welcome to our June Cognitive Kit! This month’s theme is PTSD Awareness Month and we are sharing a book recommendation, crossword puzzle, writing prompt, coloring page, and some additional resources and further reading on PTSD.
Click on the files below to download and print any of the exercises and if you’d like to, please tag us on social media when you’re finished. We’d love to see your completed activities!
Book Recommendation:
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean (2015)
“Early studies of the human brain used a simple method: wait for misfortune to strike — strokes, seizures, infectious diseases, horrendous accidents — and see how victims coped. In many cases their survival was miraculous, if puzzling. Observers were amazed by the transformations that took place when different parts of the brain were destroyed, altering victims’ personalities. Parents suddenly couldn’t recognize their own children. Pillars of the community became pathological liars. Some people couldn’t speak but could still sing.
In The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, Sam Kean travels through time with stories of neurological curiosities: phantom limbs, Siamese twin brains, viruses that eat patients’ memories, blind people who see through their tongues. He weaves these narratives together with prose that makes the pages fly by, to create a story of discovery that reaches back to the 1500s and the high-profile jousting accident that inspired this book’s title.
With the lucid, masterful explanations and razor-sharp wit his fans have come to expect, Kean explores the brain’s secret passageways and recounts the forgotten tales of the ordinary people whose struggles, resilience, and deep humanity made neuroscience possible.” (Summary from Amazon)
You can find The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery at your local library, or on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and more.
Coloring Page:
You can download this month’s PTSD Awareness Month coloring page here: June 2024 Cognitive Kit Coloring Page
Writing Prompt:
You can download this month’s PTSD Awareness Month writing prompt here: June 2024 Cognitive Kit Writing Prompt
Crossword Puzzle:
You can download this month’s crossword puzzle here: June 2024 Cognitive Kit Crossword Puzzle
(Hint! The answers can be found in the featured studies and resources below.)
Update: You can now view the answers to the June crossword puzzle here!
Featured Research Study:
Military service members can potentially be exposed to blast-related traumatic brain injuries, concussions and repetitive head impacts, and can suffer from PTSD. The UNITE Brain Bank has received donations from more than 200 military veterans and we are grateful for these donor families and the contribution they have made to our research.
To learn more about our research on veterans, take a look at the following paper:
First Author: Lee Goldstein, MD, PhD
Senior Author: Ann McKee, MD
Resources:
Take a look at this month’s highlighted resources:
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD
National Institute of Mental Health
Anxiety & Depression Association of America
Thank you for completing June’s Cognitive Kit activities! If you’d like to see kits from other months, please click here.