[sanddrag]

I recall a similar experiment done on monkeys. They implanted something like 120 wires into the brain and then sat the monkey behind a glass window and gave him a pair of joysticks. The wires from his brain were hooked to a computer. The joysticks were hooked directly to a robotic arm. He had to complete some sort of task like picking up a ball and depositing it in a cup. While he was making the motions with the joysticks, the computer read and recorded the signals coming from the wires implanted in the brain. After a while the computer was able to map certain brain signals to certain joystick movements. After the mapping was complete, they disconected the joysticks completely and had the computer move the robotic arm based on the brainwaves and mappings. The monkey still performed the same task by just thinking about it. He still had the joysticks but they were not controlling anything, only his brain was.