Immune system challenge improves recognition memory and reverses malaria-induced cognitive impairment in mice

Abstract

The immune system plays a role in the maintenance of healthy neurocognitive function. Different patterns of immune response triggered by distinct stimuli may affect nervous functions through regulatory or deregulatory signals, depending on the properties of the exogenous immunogens. Here, we investigate the effect of immune stimulation on cognitive-behavioural parameters in healthy mice and its impact on cognitive sequelae resulting from non-severe experimental malaria. We show that immune modulation induced by a specific combination of immune stimuli that induce a type 2 immune response can enhance long-term recognition memory in healthy adult mice subjected to novel object recognition task (NORT) and reverse a lack of recognition ability in NORT and anxiety-like behaviour in a light/dark task that result from a single episode of mild Plasmodium berghei ANKA malaria. Our findings suggest a potential use of immunogens for boosting and recovering recognition memory that may be impaired by chronic and infectious diseases and by the effects of ageing.