Wireheads on the way?

From The Australian:

FORGET Viagra: scientists are working on an electronic "sex chip" that will be able to stimulate pleasure centres in the brain, The Australian reports.

Essentially, there'll be a chip implanted in the area of the brain that registers pleasure. It's intended to treat people suffering from anhedonia, an inability to feel pleasure.

"There is evidence that this chip will work," Dr Aziz said.

 "A few years ago, a scientist implanted such a device into the brain of a woman with a low sex drive and turned her into a very sexually active woman. She didn't like the sudden change, so the wiring in her head was removed."

 

The wiring remains a hurdle: Dr Aziz says 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.

Larry Niven has written a number of stories featuring "wireheads" -- people addicted to devices that stimulate the pleasure centers of their brains.  He depicts it as the newest addictive drug.  He and Spider Robinson have both written stories in which people have been killed using such devices -- in order to get to a food supply, they'd have to unplug from the current, and they're not willing to end that pleasure, so they starve to death.  ("Death by Ecstasy" by Larry Niven, and I think the Spider Robinson story is "Melancholy Elephants".)

UPDATE: As soon as I posted this, I remembered the plot of "Melancholy Elephants" and decided the Spider Robinson story was probably "God is an Iron".