Thorsten O. Zander

The topic became Zander's main research interest and is now called neuroadaptive technology. His publications address the ethical considerations of this innovation, as it implies potential threats to the privacy of thought and ownership. In 2020, he obtained a full Professorship for Neuroadaptive Human-Computer Interaction department at Brandenburg University of Technology.

An example of implicit input enabling control and resulting in neuroadaptive technology was given by Zander and colleagues in 2016, demonstrating how users could guide the movements of a computer cursor to a designated or self-chosen target without being aware of doing so. Instead of the user providing explicit instructions to steer the cursor, the cursor instead moved autonomously in initially random directions, and obtained the user’s implicit brain response to each individual movement from a passive BCI. This response reflected the user’s agreement or disagreement with each movement, allowing a reinforcement learning algorithm to, over time, infer the user’s desired direction of movement. Stephen Fairclough explains that neuroadaptive technology must necessarily have its own agenda, i.e. the goal for towards which it guides the interaction, and notes that this agenda may or may not be in line with the user’s, opening up a number of potential ethical, legal, and societal issues . Zander and colleagues similarly note that implicit interaction “may even function outside of conscious awareness”, exacerbating these potential issues, but emphasize that neuroadaptive technology embodies the “cybernetic convergence of human and machine intelligence” with significant implications for future technological developments.

With passive BCI providing the technological means to obtain implicit input from brain activity to a system, it can be used to various ends. Zander organized the Passive BCI Community Meeting in Delmenhorst, 2014, where the term neuroadaptive technology was elected to represent a line of research that uses implicit input from a passive BCI to create closed-loop adaptive systems. The Society for Neuroadaptive Technology, which organizes the Neuroadaptive Technology Conferences, explains that “neuroadaptive technology utilises real-time measures of neurophysiological activity within a closed control loop to enable intelligent software adaptation.” |title=Neuroadaptive.org }} A more recent definition proposes that “a technology is neuroadaptive when it acquires implicit input through a brain-computer interface, and uses this input to enable control”

He then went on to obtain his PhD from the Technical University of Berlin and started a workgroup called “Team PhyPA” (Physiological Parameters for Adaptation of Human‐Machine Systems), which is still functioning today. In 2008, together with this group, he developed the concept of passive brain-computer interfaces (pBCIs) that refers to the use of BCIs to improve human-computer interaction by assessing information about the user state. This approach is different compared to traditional BCIs, as no explicit commands are involved and thus, no additional effort is expected from the user. Due to his work on passive BCIs, Zander gained international recognition within the scientific community and the media.

Zander and Christian Kothe introduced the concept of passive BCI in 2008 during the Graz BCI Conference, after having contrasted “passive control of a system” in one experiment with “active motor control” in an earlier publication at a SIGCHI Workshop at CHI 2008. This concept was formally expounded in 2011, offering passive BCI as a “[fusion of] BCI technology with cognitive monitoring” to constitute a third category of BCI systems aside from “active” and “reactive”. In this categorization, a passive BCI system “derives its outputs from arbitrary brain activity arising without the purpose of voluntary control, for enriching a human–machine interaction with implicit information on the actual user state. Active and reactive systems, on the other hand, are consciously used by users with the intention to control an application.

Zander attended the University of Münster from 1998 to 2004 where he graduated in mathematics, with focus on mathematical logic. During his studies, he worked for the university's office supporting visually impaired users and at the Fraunhofer Institute First in Berlin. In 2011 he obtained his PhD from the chair of Human-Maschine Systems at Technical University of Berlin, supervised by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Roetting and Dr. Scott Makeig (Director of the SCCN at UCSD).

Thorsten O. Zander (born 1975 in Lüdenscheid, Germany) is a German scientist who introduced the concept of passive brain-computer interface. He co-founded Zander Labs, a German-Dutch company in the field of passive brain computer interface (pBCI) and neuro-adaptive technology (NAT).