Photo by David W. Johnson, courtesy of the Alzheimers Association

Dr. Bradley T. Hyman, director of the Massachusetts Alzheimers Disease Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, received the Henry Wisniewski Lifetime Achievement Award Sunday from Kristine Yaffe, a University of California, San Francisco professor at the Alzheimers Association International Conference in Vancouver, Canada.

By Gal Tziperman Lotan, Globe Correspondent

A Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School neurologist received a lifetime achievement award at an Alzheimers Association conference in Vancouver, Canada Sunday.

Dr. Bradley T. Hyman, director of the Massachusetts Alzheimers Disease Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, received the Henry Wisniewski Lifetime Achievement Award, The Alzheimer's Association said in a statement.

Its an extremely nice recognition, especially because the award is named after one of the giants of neuropathology, Hyman said in a phone interview from Vancouver Sunday.

Hyman has studied changes in patients brains and nervous systems, as well as genetic changes that underlie dementia, the statement said.

His research helps describe brain lesions in Alzheimer's patients, the statement said.

Hyman recently worked on imaging amyloid protein fragments that are broken down in healthy brains but accumulate and form amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's patients; and tau tangles, created when tau proteins that keep the brains cell transport system in working order die and collapse the system.

At its international conference, the Alzheimers Association also gave a lifetime achievement award to Lennart Mucke of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and the University of California, San Francisco, Monique M.B. Breteler of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases and the University of Bonn in Germany, and Ronald Petersen of the Mayo Alzheimers Disease Research Center in Rochester, Minn.

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