Tiroyaone Bogale - IUIS Beijing ICI 2019 Presentation

Dr Tiroyaone Bogale was one of the Division's faculty members who attended the IUIS 17th International Congress of Immunology (ICI) held in Beijing from 19-23 October 2019. Dr Bogale was a Symposium speaker who presented on "Microglia play a significant role in interleukin 4 receptor alpha directed cognition". She also sang "My African Dream" beautifully to open the presentation for the 18th ICI meeting which will be held in Cape Town in 2022.

Tiroyaone Bogale - Microglia play a significant role in interleukin 4 receptor alpha directed cognition

Both IL-4 and IL-13 (Brombacher et. al, 2017) are essential for optimal learning and memory, and they signal via a common receptor IL-4Rα. While deletion of either cytokine, or both, leads to impaired cognition, IL-4Rα deletion leads to impairment of reference memory formation, but not learning. IL-4Rα deficiency also impairs movement, but improves sensory motor learning, and motivated behavior by activated myeloid cells during the task of learning. This result partially explains why both wild-type and IL-4Rα deficient mice learn the spatial learning task equally well. A breakthrough in this area of cognitive function can aid in development of therapeutic approaches for neurocognitive disorders associated with long-term memory loss and dementia.