The agencies of human rights around the world have criticised RNM as a violation of basic human rights because it violates privacy and the dignity of thoughts and activities of life. Several countries have protested against it and refer to it as an attack on their human and civil rights.

Wireless brain implants are being developed by scientists at Stanford University who have discovered advanced technology that would allow tiny health-tracking devices to be embedded in our brains, hearts or livers. This technology was made possible through a midfield powering method that can safely transmit power to tiny implants in organs like the heart or brain, well beyond the range of current near-field systems.

Wireless brain implants are being developed by scientists at Stanford University who have discovered advanced technology that would allow tiny health-tracking devices to be embedded in our brains, hearts or livers. This technology was made possible through a midfield powering method that can safely transmit power to tiny implants in organs like the heart or brain, well beyond the range of current near-field systems.

You can inject one under your skin and no one will ever notice. Using short-range radio frequency identification (RFID) signals, it can transmit your identity as you pass through a security checkpoint or walk into a football stadium. It can help you buy groceries at Wal-Mart. In a worst-case scenario - if you are kidnapped in a foreign country, for example - it could save your life. Microchip implants like the ones pet owners use to track their dogs and cats could become commonplace in humans in the next decade. Experts are divided on whether they're appropriate for people, but the implants could offer several advantages. For soldiers and journalists in war zones, an implant could be the difference between life and death. A tracker could also help law enforcement quickly locate a kidnapped child.

"From a pure energy perspective, the brain is hard to match," Kwabena Boahen, the bioengineer at Stanford University who led the chip's development, said in a statement. Not only are personal computers slower, they take 40,000 times more power than the brain to run, Boahen said. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures] Neurogrid consists of 16 custom-designed Neurocore chips in a device the size of an iPad, which can simulate 1 million neurons and billions of synapses, or brain connections. That's a vast improvement over previous brain simulations, but still only a fraction of the roughly 80 billion neurons in a human brain, researchers said. Neurogrid uses about 9,000 times less power than a typical PC, by having synapses share hardware circuits, and about the same amount of power as a tablet. In addition to modeling the human brain, Boahen is working with other Stanford researchers to adapt Neurogrid for controlling prosthetic limbs for paralyzed people. The chip would translate brain signals into movements of the limb, without overheating the brain. Another possible application is using Neurogrid to control humanoid robots.

Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, envisions a day in the not too distant future when a patient with severe memory loss can get help from an electronic implant. In people whose brains have suffered damage from Alzheimer's, stroke, or injury, disrupted neuronal networks often prevent long-term memories from forming. For more than two decades, Berger has designed silicon chips to mimic the signal processing that those neurons do when they're functioning properly-the work that allows us to recall experiences and knowledge for more than a minute. Ultimately, Berger wants to restore the ability to create long-term memories by implanting chips like these in the brain.

TrueNorth comes packed with 4,096 processor cores, and it mimics one million human neurons and 256 million synapses, two of the fundamental biological building blocks that make up the human brain.

Smartphone mapping features are great for getting directions, until you lose signal. But you could avoid getting lost in the woods with a guiding system embedded in your body.

'Make these devices as small as possible'