Neuropsychology and Behavioral Neurology

Dr. Miller holds the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professorship in Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He directs the busy UCSF dementia center where patients in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond receive comprehensive clinical evaluations. His goal is the delivery of model care to all of the patients who enter the clinical and research programs at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC).Dr. Miller is a behavioral neurologist focused on dementia with special interests in brain and behavior relationships as well as the genetic and molecular underpinnings of disease. His work in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) emphasizes both the behavioral and emotional deficits that characterize these patients, while simultaneously noting the visual creativity that can emerge in the setting of FTD. He is the principal investigator of the NIH-sponsored Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) and program project on FTD called Frontotemporal Dementia: Genes, Imaging and Emotions. He oversees a healthy aging program, which includes an artist in residence program. In addition, he helps lead two philanthropy-funded research consortia, the Tau Consortium and Consortium for Frontotemporal Research, focused on developing treatments for tau and progranulin disorders, respectively. Also, he works with the National Football League to help with the education and assessment of players related to brain health. Dr. Miller teaches extensively, runs the Behavioral Neurology Fellowship at UCSF, and oversees visits of more than 50 foreign scholars every year.Dr. Miller has received many awards including the Potamkin Award from the American Academy of Neurology, the Raymond Adams Lecture at the American Neurological Association, the Elliot Royer Award from the San Francisco Neurological community, the UCSF Annual Faculty Research Lectureship in Clinical Science, the UCSF Academic Senate Distinction in Mentoring Award, Distinguished Service to Minorities, from Charles Drew University, and the Gene D. Cohen Research Award in Creativity and Aging from the National Center for Creative Aging. He has authored The Human Frontal Lobes, The Behavioral Neurology of Dementia, Frontotemporal Dementia and over 600 other publications regarding dementia. He has been featured in Fortune magazine and The New York Times, as well as on "Charlie Rose," "PBS NewsHour" and other media. For more than three decades, Dr. Miller has been the scientific director for the philanthropic organization The John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation, a private philanthropic organization that funds basic science research in Alzheimer’s disease.

• Cholinergic components of frontal lobe function and dysfunction. Neurochemistry of cognition: erotonergic and adrenergic mechanisms. Cortical neuroanatomy and cognition. Functional neuroimaging of cognition. Neuropsychology of aging and dementia. Neuropsychological testing: bedside approaches. Anterograde amnesia. Retrograde memory loss. Disorders of semantic memory. Implicit learning and memory. Working memory. The dysexecutive syndromes. Apraxia of speech. Aphasia. Cognitive processes underlying reading and writing and their neural substrates. Apraxia. Acalculia. Hemispatial neglect. Visuospatial and visuoconstructive deficits. Optic ataxia and Bálint’s syndrome: neuropsychological and neurophysiological prospects. Visual agnosia. Illusory perceptions of the human body and self. The musical brain. Visual art and the brain. Laboratory testing of emotion and frontal cortex. Neuropsychological characterization of mild cognitive impairment. Neuropsychology of Alzheimer’s disease. Neuropsychology of frontotemporal dementia. Neuropsychology of dementia with Lewy bodies. The neuropsychology of vascular dementia.