Posted October 14, 2010
Marsel Mesulam was recognized for his extraordinary achievements in advancing Alzheimer’s research at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease 2010 in Honolulu. He is the recipient of the 2010 Bengt Winblad Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Mesulam’s research addresses the connectivity of the monkey brain, the organization of human cholinergic pathways, the representation of cognitive functions by large-scale neurocognitive networks and the neurobiology of dementias. Dr. Mesulam’s work on cholinergic pathways has been groundbreaking in understanding Alzheimer’s.
Dr. Mesulam was born in Istanbul in 1945. He received the degrees of bachelor of arts in 1968 and medical doctor in 1972, both from Harvard University. Dr. Mesulam was appointed professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, where he founded and led the behavioral neurology unit of Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital. In 1994 he was appointed the Dunbar Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry and the director of the multidepartmental Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He currently serves on the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Scientific Advisory Board.