A 'sex chip' is being developed by scientists which will be able to stimulate pleasure centres in the brain, Sunday Times reported. The chip would give tiny shocks from implanted electrodes to the brain.

A research survey conducted by Morten Kringelbach, senior fellow at Oxford University's department of psychiatry, and reported in the Nature Reviews Neuroscience journal, found that the orbitofrontal cortex could be a "new stimulation target" to help people suffering from anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure from such activities. Stimulating this area can produce intense pleasure, he added.

However, Kringelbach's colleague Aziz said the wiring remains a hurdle. He said that the current technology, which requires surgery to connect a wire from a heart pacemaker into the brain, causes bleeding in some patients and is "intrusive and crude". By 2015, he predicts, micro-computers in the brain with a range of applications could be self-powered and controlled by hand-held transmitters.

An electronic machine that generates sexual sensations is already under development by a North Carolina doctor, Stuart Meloy, who is modifying a spinal cord stimulator to produce pleasure in women. He calls it the Orgasmatron, a name taken from an orgasm-producing device in the 1973 Woody Allen film Sleeper.