Rolf Dermietzel is Professor and head of the Department of Neuroanatomy and Molecular Brain Research at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. He gained his PhD from the University Hospital in Essen, Germany, in 1970, before training in cell biology at the California Institute of Technology and the Marine Biological Institute in Woods Hole, MA. His research focuses on identifying the molecular make-up of the blood-brain barrier and the role of gap junctions in brain tissues. Professor Dermietzel has won several awards in electron microscopy, and co-authored three books in different fields of neurosciences, among them the bestselling Handbook of Neurotransmitters and Neuromodulators.

David C. Spray is Professor of Neuroscience and Medicine (Cardiology) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY. He obtained his PhD from the University of Florida College of Medicine in 1973, and is also Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at City College. His research has focused on physiological roles of gap junction channels, how alterations in gap junction expression and function lead to disease and whether novel types of gap junction-altering drugs may be therapeutically useful. Professor Spray is a foreign member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and has published some 350 full-length papers and book chapters.

Maiken Nedergaard received an M.D. from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1983, and her Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen in 1988. She worked at Cornell University Medical College before joining the faculty of New York Medical College as Professor of Cell Biology in 1994. Since 2003 she has been on the faculty of the University of Rochester. Her work focuses on defining the role of astrocytes in synaptic plasticity, as well as in acute neurological diseases, including stroke, spinal cord injury and epilepsy. Recently Professor Nedergaard has been analyzing the significance of glutamatergic signaling in malignant gliomas.