Photo by David W. Johnson, courtesy of the Alzheimer’s Association

Dr. Bradley T. Hyman, director of the Massachusetts Alzheimer’s 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 Alzheimer’s 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 Alzheimer’s Association conference in Vancouver, Canada Sunday.

Dr. Bradley T. Hyman, director of the Massachusetts Alzheimer’s 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.

“It’s 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 brain’s cell transport system in working order die and collapse the system.