As with drugs, the team found that love can trigger reward signals in the brain and can cause euphoria - but, it can also lead to cravings, obsessive behaviour, and grief when a relationship ends.
The team identified two distinct ways to describe love addiction: a "narrow" view and a "broad" view.
"The narrow view counts only the most extreme, harmful forms of love or love-related behaviours as being potentially addictive in nature," the authors wrote in the study.
"The broad view, by contrast, counts even basic social attachment as being on a spectrum of addictive motivations, underwritten by similar neurochemical processes as more conventional addictions."
According to the researchers, "narrow" love addiction is the result of abnormal processes in the brain's reward center.
This form of love addiction is thought to be "quite rare," and has been linked to attachment behaviours that interfere with other aspects of that person's everyday life.
And, it's even led to stalking and murder, according to New Scientist.
"Broad" love addiction, on the other hand, is more like typical love, though cravings are stronger.
Both of these forms, though, can cause harm, as they can lead to unhealthy and even abusive relationships.
According to the researchers, further study is necessary to determine if either, or both, of these conditions should be considered potential forms of addiction.
But, they say the evidence shows that those who experience love 'addiction' share processes in the brain with those seen in drug addiction.
"At a minimum, however, the evidence we have discussed in this article suggests that drug addiction, on one hand, and at least certain love-related experiences or behaviours, on the other, can reasonably be understood to be equivalent phenomena at the level of the brain, underwritten by the same neurophysiological processes," the authors wrote.
"If this is correct, it cannot be the case that (narrow) addiction is a phenomenon confined to addictive drugs."
