Dr Julie Bakker is a tenured Research Scientist of the Belgian FNRS with an affiliation to the University of Liège, the Netherlands Institute for Neurosciences, and the Medical Center of the Vrije Universiteit (Netherlands). She received her PhD in endocrinology & reproduction at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 1996 and received a young investigator award at the conference for Steroid hormones at Breckenridge, CO, USA, for her PhD thesis. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Dr Michael Baum at Boston University from 1996-2000, and with Dr Jacques Balthazart, University of Liège, from 2000-2004, prior to obtaining her permanent research position at the FNRS in 2004. She received another young investigator award from the Journal of Neuroendocrinology in 2002. She is an active member of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology (SBN), she has been on the advisory board since 2006 and on the program committee for the annual meetings since 2007. She is a member of the editorial board of Endocrinology since 2008 and of Hormones and Behavior since 2009. Her research concerns the sexual differentiation of the brain and behavior. More specifically, she uses genetically engineered mice to study the effects of androgen and estrogen on the neural substrate underlying sexual and social behaviors. She was recently awarded a Vici grant from the Dutch government to study the sexual differentiation of the human brain.

Dr D. Nora Abrous is head of the team "Neurogenesis and Pathophysiology" in the Neurocenter Magendie at Bordeaux. She obtained a Ph.D. in Neurosciences at the University of Bordeaux. After 2 years of post doc in the laboratory of Dr SB Dunnett (Cambridge, UK) she obtained a tenure track at INSERM. Dr Abrous’s primary research interest was the study of neuronal plasticity in the context of grafting embryonic dopaminergic neurones in animal models of Parkinson disease. Then she focused on the property of the adult brain to create new neurones. In particular, she studied role of adult-born neurones in memory processing and in the appearance of age-related memory disorders.

Dr Stephen Warren is the William Patterson Timmie Professor of Human Genetics, Biochemistry, and Pediatrics and Chair of the Department of Human Genetics at Emory University School of Medicine. He received his PhD in human genetics from Michigan State University and, prior to joining the Emory faculty, was a fellow at the University of Illinois and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. From 1991 until 2002, Dr Warren was an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a Diplomat of the American Board of Medical Genetics and a founding Fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics. Dr. Warren was elected President of the American Society of Human Genetics in 2006 and was Editor-in-Chief of The American Journal of Human Genetics from 1999 until 2005. Among his awards are the William Allan Award from the American Society of Human Genetics and was twice awarded the William Rosen Research Award from the National Fragile X Foundation. In 2003, he was an inaugural inductee of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Hall of Honor and in 2004 Dr Warren was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

Jeremy Henley is Professor of Molecular Neuroscience and Assistant Director MRC Centre for Synaptic Plasticity at Bristol University. He received his PhD in Physiology in from King's College, London University. He then did a post-doc. with Robert Oswald at Cornell University in the US studying the biochemistry and cell biology of neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and kainate-binding proteins in the lower vertebrate CNS. He returned to the UK to work at the Molecular Neurobiology Unit in the MRC-LMB at Cambridge with Eric Barnard. During this time his focus of interest centered on glutamate receptors structure and function. He then took a lectureship at Birmingham University and in 1994 he did a sabbatical at Kyoto University, Japan in the lab of Shigetada Nakanishi. He returned to Bristol University in the UK in 1995. His research focuses on the mechanisms that regulate the trafficking of glutamate receptors using molecular and live cell imaging approaches. Increased understanding these processes will give important insights into synapse formation, stabilisation and plasticity and thus into the cellular mechanisms underlying learning and memory and some neurodegenerative diseases.

Manuel Carreiras is Professor of Psychology at Ikerbasque and Scientific Director of the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain) (www.bcbl.eu). He pursued his PhD at the University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, and completed his training through study visits to other universities (Oregon, Massachusetts, University College of London, etc.). The aim of his work is to understand the cognitive processes that underlie language comprehension and to identify their neurobiological bases. His research focuses mainly on the different levels of processing involved in reading (orthographic, phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, anaphoric, etc.). In addition, he is also interested in understanding the cognitive and neural underpinnings of human language comprehension and production in other modalities, such as Sign Language, Cued Speech, or Silbo Gomero (the whistled language of the island of La Gomera), and in more specific populations such as bilinguals, deaf people and elderly people suffering from cognitive impairment and senile dementia. In his work, he uses behavioural approaches such as reaction times and eye movements recording as well as brain imaging paradigms, including electrophysiological and fMRI techniques.

Prof. Niels Birbaumer is Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology and Director of the MEG-Imaging Center at the University of Tuebingen Medical School, Germany and Visiting Professor at Ospedale San Camillo, Venezia, Italy. He is Member of the National German Acadaemy, Leopoldina and recipient of the prestigious Leibniz Award and many other awards for his research on Brain-Computer-Interfaces in paralysis, epilepsy and stroke. He published more than 600 peer reviewed scientific papers and several books on neuronal plasticity, learning, and Neuroprosthetics.