Their electrode configuration has predetermined non-overlapping sensory and motor areas.

So it would be more like having a whole bunch of cats lined up and spraying water onto the cat corresponding to the ball position, while listening for the hissing from some other cats to determine where to move the paddle. The random stimulus as feedback when the ball resets corresponds to spraying the cats unpredictably.

To avoid that punishment, the cats need to work together to make the right cats hiss at the right time to intercept the ball with the paddle. (The underlying theory is that cats are okay with being sprayed as long as they can predict it, a.k.a. the Free Energy Principle.)

The fact that this feedback increases performance relative to the other experimental conditions indicates that some adaptation is going on in the network.