Can we fix a broken heart?

What happens to your body when you fall in love and what happens when you lose that love? Humans are known to be a deeply social species. Our most gratified state arises when we feel belonged in our environment and with those around us. Hence, we tend to form relationships. Our motivation to maintain stable and meaningful social relationships is a common pattern that is rooted in our evolutionary history.

Love in the brain was examined by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI, in 2003 in order to map the neural activity of the brain when looking at a loved one. The scan showed vibrant fireworks of green, yellow and blue in an image of grey matter, confirming that love is activated by an influx of dopamine. Dopamine is one of the main neurotransmitters that are responsible for the feeling of pleasure and satisfaction, like a reward system. Love isn’t the only thing that wires an increase in dopamine. Nicotine based drugs and cocaine follow the same pattern of increased dopamine activity within the brain to provide a pleasurable feeling. The more dopamine that is released, the better you feel, the more you want it, and the easier it is to become addicted. From parallel conclusions, you can say that love is a drug.

So then what happens when the love is taken away? If you compare it to taking away a drug from a drug addict, it results in withdrawal. The extremity of the withdrawal is then determined by how addicted they were to the drug. Similar to how our body and mind hurt, heartbreak causes our body and mind to also hurt. The brain regions involved in anticipating pain and regulating negative emotions are the right anterior insula, which regulates motor control and cognitive function, and the superior frontal gyrus, which links the nervous system to the endocrine system for hormone production. Thus, in response to physical pain, the brain activates the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as an alarm for distress.

When in the mire of heartbreak, chances are that you feel pain somewhere in your body. Maybe you feel it in your heart, stomach or maybe even in the palm of your hand. The pain can be temporary, or it can be chronic, depleting you and hanging over a crushing sensation. So if an fMRI of a heartbroken patient were to be taken, if he/she is feeling pain and anger, the fMRI will show color development in the three areas due to increase in the hormone progesterone. Progesterone can be linked to anger and anxiety, which causes an overall depressing effect. In the midst of a heartbreak, the panic and denial of losing a loved one, we tend to show “signs of lack of emotional control” for weeks or months after initial heartbreak. This may result in unsuitable phone calls, writing letters, pleading for reconciliation, crying sessions, uncontrollable drinking, or dramatic encounters in the wake of passion.

If it hurts so much and makes us do crazy things, how can a broken heart be fixed? Unfortunately, there is no yet physical cure for heartbreak. There is no pill to cure it. The closest may be that recent studies have shown that Acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol, provides a placebo effect on patients resulting in significantly low activity in their brain’s ACC. This means that there is lower sense of distress in the patients.

Although this might not be a solid answer, other studies have shown that sensitive social support is one of the greatest source of relief for emotional distress. Hanging out with your friends or focusing on other things to keep yourself busy are beneficial for a smoother healing process. As much as we’d like to grow a new fresh heart every time we get our hearts broken, that is still not feasible. A heartbreak can distort your sense of self, and although it is a popular feeling that a lot of us can relate on, it is a topic still in research. On the bright side, just like the nerves on a broken bone grow, change and connect with new nerves over time to heal, your heart also heals.

DNA for Data Storage: Storing all the World’s Information

When you want to store away physical objects for the future, the attic tends to be the go-to place for this. However, at some point, it becomes cramped, crowded and unorganized. What can be even messier than your attic is your computer and all other electrical devices with a storage component. A one page paper is small and easy to manage, but imagine all those files, documents, pictures, videos, and applications that pile up until your computer’s memory is full. Then, the computer starts running slow and you need a USB, external memory disk, or an online storage unit like cloud to back-up and save everything. But with approximately 7.7 million people currently on earth, and almost 2 centuries since the first built computer, how are we supposed to manage ALL of it?

Scientists have proclaimed DNA as being a potential source of storage for long periods of time. Its dense, easy to replicate and stable property makes it a highly desired candidate for an easier method of storage and retrieval. Current storage uses magnetic tape to store zettabytes of data but with the extensive amount of data production made every day, the current infrastructure is expected to consume all the world’s microchip-grade silicon by the year 2040 and therefore does not seem like an efficient method. Researchers can use the DNA base pairs Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Cytosine (C) and Guanine (G) to make a script to encode information. Attaching non-binary numbers, 0s and 1s, to transcribe the nucleotides into a coding sequence can allow the ability to simplify the computational language in the writing and reading process.

Encoding data in DNA initially started as a joke in 2011, but it was soon seen as a potential idea for long time archiving. Shakespeare's Sonnet, snippets of Martin Luther King’s speech “I Have a Dream” and even parts of Beethoven have been successfully encoded into a strand of DNA. Unfortunately, the biggest worry is that DNA tends to make 1 mistake in the nucleotide sequence for every 100 bases. While reading the transcript, the desired file may not be able to be retrieved properly without being damaged. DNA uses one of the five types of DNA polymerases for proofreading and repairing for DNA sequences, so a mathematical computation needs to be made that performs the same function. The economics of writing DNA still remains problematic since DNA-synthesis companies charge 0.07-0.09 dollars per base. This means that a minute of stereo can be stored for $100,000. For such high expenses, an alternative source of processing needs to be found that is more cost effective.

Based on bacterial genetics, digital DNA can maybe one day rival or exceed storage technology. The read-write speed of a hard disk is between 3,000 to 5,000 microseconds per bit with a retention span of just over 10 years, using 0.04 watts per gigabytes. In contrast, bacterial DNA’s reading-writing speed is less than 100 microseconds per bit, with over 100 years retention period and uses less than 1*10^11 watts per gigabyte. To conclude, this means that even though the translation of memory is slower in DNA, DNA storage still stores for 10 times longer than a regular hard disk, and uses an exponential amount of less energy with 1*10^6 times more data storage density. This means that we need only 1 kg of DNA storage to store the world’s information. Once the design is successful and the economics of its production resolved, we will be able to put all the internet’s information, books, and more with terabytes of information in something as small as a strand of hair.