Michael Meaney was a post-doc when he met Dr. Sapolsky.  According to Dr. Sapolsky, Meaney was very personable and very motivated to resurrect neonatal handling as a topic of research, and it was because of this enthusiasm that Sapolsky agreed to collaborate with Meaney in research.  As far as communication between the two labs went, Dr. Sapolsky said that while there was no email, there was frequent communication through phone calls and faxes.  When Sapolsky was in Africa for field research, however, they had to resort to letter-writing as a means of keeping in touch.  

Click here to see Dr. Sapolsky talk about how he met Meaney, and how their labs communicated.  (5:40-6:22, 18:35-19:42)