A little history (Score 2, Informative)

I was watching the Discovery channel awhile ago (probably close to a year, if not more) and saw something that may have related to this research. The scientists began by giving the monkeys a joystick (or mouse, memory is hazy) and when the monkeys moved the cursor to a box on the screen they would receive a treat. Then they took away the control and wired the monkey's brain so that (s)he could simply use thought to control the cursor on the screen. Apparently this was done by thinking of the same movements that the monkey would do to maneuver the cursor but not actually physically performing the action. I'm kind of curious if this current robotic arm is an extention (no pun intended) of that research or completely unrelated.