A research team led by C. Justin LEE and LEE Boyoung at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) has identified a new molecular pathway in the brain that directly links abnormal sugar modifications on proteins to depressive behaviors. Specifically, chronic stress disrupts sugar chains (O-glycans) attached to proteins in the prefrontal cortex, thereby triggering depression. The findings, published in Science Advances, open new possibilities for targeted therapies for treatment-resistant depression.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented several challenges, leaving the specific impact of class closures on student performance unclear. To address this, researchers examined the effect of pre-pandemic class closures due to influenza outbreaks on students’ test scores in Japan. They found that class closures adversely affected the math scores of elementary school boys from low-income households, likely due to lost instructional time and unhealthy behaviors. Fortunately, high-quality teachers could help students recover from the learning loss.

 On October 2 in the open-access journal PLOS Global Public Health, Steve Haake from Sheffield Hallam University and colleagues published a model for evaluating life satisfaction. They demonstrate their model using participants in a weekly running event as a case study, finding that increases in health, especially mental health, most strongly predict improvements in life satisfaction.