Significantly, we demonstrated that damaged mtDNA, resulting from impaired neuronal IFNβ-IFNAR signaling, does not only induce PDD-like pathology upon injection into healthy animals, including causing motor and cognitive deficits, pα-synuclein accumulation, and neuronal loss, it also triggers the spread of the pathology to other brain regions in an “infectious-like manner”. Here, IFNAR1 is linked to Cognitive impairment.