An iPlant is a new kind of brain implant that could be developed in ten years or so if there's enough public demand for it. We've known for more than fifty years how to use brain implants to control motivation in mammals. For instance, it’s really quite easy to give rats the motivation do heavy exercise for hours or learn new, complex behaviours. ‘iPlant’ is simply the term that some of us have started using to refer to that kind of brain implant, but developed for humans.

The way these implants work is they sit in the region of the brain that generates dopamine, and whenever the animal does something you want it to do you stimulate that region. This releases dopamine all over the brain, which is really rewarding to the animal and makes it want to repeat whatever it was it just did.

So if you had an iPlant you could use it to motivate yourself to practise languages by using language tutorials, or to motivate yourself to use cancer research or simply to use exercise equipment. The thing is it would take effort out of the equation: the iPlant would help you do things you wish you did but normally can’t find the motivation to do.

The electronics and surgical equipment that this would require have actually already been developed; they’re used to treat Parkinson’s disease. So all that we really need to do is to realign them slightly to target this dopamine-generating region.

Visit www.iPlant.eu for more information.