Heartbreak can unravel us. Sometimes the unraveling is quiet, and other times violent. If your heartbreak could be solved in a certain number of clinical sessions, would you sign up? Though they were not originally designed to target heartbreak, emerging biotechnologies could make “curing” heartbreak a reality.

Neuroscience of heartbreak 

When you're in love, your brain releases the neurochemicals oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin to create its own "love cocktail." Oxytocin, which is also dubbed the “love drug,” is a hormone that promotes trust and social bonding. Dopamine and serotonin are both chemical messengers with various functions. Dopamine is responsible for pleasure and reinforcing our reward system, while serotonin is responsible for keeping us emotionally stable and happy.

When we lose a romantic relationship, we no longer receive these neurochemicals in the same abundance, which can lead us to feel anxious, emotionally out of balance, and even depressed. Self-prescribed "get better" treatment plans differ from person to person, but what if there were a foolproof way to mend a broken heart?

TMS and emotional pain

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive procedure that is currently used in clinical settings to treat people with major depressive disorder (MDD) who are resistant to typical treatments like behavioral therapies or psychiatric medications. TMS works by stimulating nerve cells in brain regions responsible for mood control to increase neural activity. These brain areas include the amygdala, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the hypothalamus.

The amygdala is widely known for regulating our fear response: fight, flight, or freeze. It is also responsible for emotional learning by connecting our emotional responses to our memories. The hypothalamus keeps us in homeostasis, a balanced state, and secretes dopamine and oxytocin. Lastly, there is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in emotional regulation by using reasoning to manage emotions. 

Potential applications to heartbreak

These three brain areas are at the center of research on mood disorders like MDD because dysfunction in these areas gives rise to certain disorders, and one of those dysfunctions is related to heartbreak. Heartbreak can result in a condition called love trauma syndrome (LTS), which affects a person's functioning in various areas of their life, including feelings of depression or anxiety, and obsessive thoughts. 

Because the symptoms of LTS overlap with symptoms of MDD and therefore affect the same brain regions, there is potential to use TMS to help those with LTS find mental peace and facilitate healing.  

Earlier in the article, I mentioned three brain areas that TMS can target: the amygdala, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the hypothalamus. There is a fourth brain area that TMS can target; the hippocampus. The hippocampus is our memory center and is responsible for our verbal memory, visual-spatial memory, and explicit memories (facts and events). The close proximity of the amygdala and hippocampus is what enables emotional memory learning. 

Both depression and heartbreak can affect your memory schemas. Memory schemas are mental frameworks shaped by previous experiences that influence how we perceive, interpret, and remember new information. For depressed individuals, this looks like fixating on negative experiences. Heartbreak can alter schemas by changing expectations, perceiving neutral/positive actions as negative (e.g., someone taking too long to reply), or skewing your memory of previous events, causing a negative thought pattern that reinforces an "I should have seen this coming" sentiment. 

A 2020 research study found that TMS can target the brain's memory center and diminish negative memories in people with depression. Therefore, in addition to alleviating emotional distress, TMS could theoretically also have applications in diminishing negative love memories.  

Conclusion - Is there any research now? 

With all this evidence for brain-based intervention, how close is this future really? Well, a 2024 study in the Journal of Psychiatric Research has shown that brain stimulation is a very viable treatment option for LTS. Using a different non-invasive brain stimulation device, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), participants whose dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was stimulated showed decreased LTS symptoms: specifically, improvements in their depressive and anxious states. Even more fascinating, participants still felt better after a month. 

So, I will leave you with this: If love can etch itself into our minds, perhaps science can help soften its imprint.