DOCTEUR RAFFAELLA MIGLIACCIO

Dr Raffaella Migliaccio is a physician, neurologist, trained in Naples, Italy. She spent part of her doctoral training at the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). After her PhD in science (2009), she moved to Paris and joined INSERM.Since 2015, Dr Migliaccio has been an Inserm Chargée de Recherche (Associate Professor) at the Brain Institute (ICM), and has clinical activity at the Institute for Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease (IM2A) at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, Paris.

Her research interests focus on behavioral and cognitive symptoms and the neuroimaging study of neural networks in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). With the support of the Alzheimer Research Foundation, she is conducting research focusing on early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (starting before the age of 65).

Patients suffering from this pathology often have so-called “atypical” forms of AD, which means that the disease begins with a fairly selective impairment of brain functions dealing with vision or language rather than memory, as is the case in the classic form of the disease. In addition to the scientific importance of understanding this particular pathology, it would be crucial to be able to better anticipate the potential for progression of the disease, and the factors that determine them, in these young and active subjects.

Dr Migliaccio has therefore undertaken to follow a series of patients with early-onset AD and proposes to compare “vulnerable” patients, those in whom the disease progresses rapidly, with those who are more “resilient”. The imaging analysis will benefit from the use of a hybrid machine, a PET MRI funded by the FRA, which simultaneously obtains functional magnetic resonance imaging data and isotopic marker data on a positron cam. For this study, the researchers will use a marker for the deposits of tau protein, one of the characteristic abnormalities of AD. The localization of these deposits will be confronted with the analysis of intracerebral functional connections and their interaction at the level of “hubs” of neural networks, that is to say at the level of “leader” regions of the brain.

Recent publications

  1. Montembeault M, Sayah S, Rinaldi D, Le Toullec B, Bertrand A, Funkiewiez A, Saracino D, Camuzat A, Couratier P, Chouly M, Hannequin D, Aubier-Girard C, Pasquier F, Delbeuck X, Colliot O, Batrancourt B, Azuar C, Lévy R, Dubois B, Le Ber I, Migliaccio R; PrevDemAls study group. Cognitive inhibition impairments in presymptomatic C9orf72 carriers. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2020 Apr;91(4):366-372.
  2. Migliaccio R, Agosta F, Basaia S, Cividini C, Habert MO, Kas A, Montembeault M, Filippi M. Functional brain connectome in posterior cortical atrophy. Neuroimage Clin. 2020;25:102100.
  3. Kas A,* Migliaccio R,* Tavitian B. A future for PET imaging in Alzheimer’s disease. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2020 Feb;47(2):231-234. doi: 10.1007/s00259-019-04640-w. *equally contributed
  4. Montembeault M, Brambati S M, Lamari F, Gallea C, Michon A, Samri D, Dormont D, Epelbaum S, Habert MO, Dubois B, Kas A, Migliaccio R.  Posterior cortical atrophy: brain atrophy, metabolism and clinical profiles according to AD CSF biomarkers. Neuroimage clinical, 2018.
  5. Migliaccio R, * Bera G, * Michelin T, Lamari F, Ferrieux S, Nogues M, Bertin H, Habert MO, Dubois B, Teichmann M, Kas A. Parietal involvement in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia with Alzheimer’s disease CSF profile J Alzheimers Dis. (2018).
  6. Migliaccio R, Gallea C, Kas A, Perlbarg V, Samri D, Trotta L, Michon A, Lacomblez L, Dubois B, Lehericy S, Bartolomeo P. Functional Connectivity of Ventral and Dorsal Visual Streams in Posterior Cortical Atrophy. J Alzheimers Dis. (2016)
  7. Migliaccio R, Agosta F, Possin KL, Canu E, Filippi M, Rabinovici GD, Rosen HJ, Miller BL, Gorno-Tempini ML. Mapping the progression of atrophy in early and late onset Alzheimer’s disease. J Alzheimers Dis. (2015)
  8. Teichmann M, Kas A, Boutet C, Ferrieux S, Nogues M, Samri D, Rogan C, Dormont D, Dubois B, Migliaccio R. Deciphering logopenic primary progressive aphasia: a clinical, imaging and biomarker investigation. Brain (2013)
  9. Migliaccio R, Agosta F, Possin K, Rabinovici GD, Miller BL, Gorno-Tempini ML. White Matter atrophy in Alzheimer Disease variants. Alzheimer and Dementia (2012)
  10. Migliaccio R, Agosta F, Rascovsky K, Karydas A, Bonasera S, Rabinovici GD, Miller BL, Gorno-Tempini ML. Clinical syndromes associated with posterior atrophy: early age of onset AD spectrum. Neurology (2009)