WIDOW Pamela Foynes wants you to look at the scan of her husband John’s brain to understand the ravaging effects of Alzheimer’s.

Mrs Foynes released this picture yesterday as part of a drive to show the devastating way she said the disease “robs people of their personality and dignity”.

Her 80-year-old husband John died last year after a five-year battle with the condition.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, affecting 465,000 people in the UK and 6,000 in Oxfordshire alone.

Mrs Foynes, 67, of Weirs Lane, in Oxford, has also raised money for the Alzheimer’s Society.

She said: “I want people to know just how bad this disease is.

“The centre of the brain should be a grey colour and on John’s scan, it is clearly black. This is Alzheimer’s at work, destroying his brain cells and robbing him of his personality and dignity.

“You can see the person you love sitting in front of you, but you know you are losing them more and more each day.

“If any positive could come from John’s death it would be that more people would discuss and understand this horrible condition.”

Alzheimer’s is a degenerative condition of the brain which leads to dementia, and although the drugs are not a cure, they can slow its progression. Mrs Foynes said her husband of 20 years, who worked at Didcot Power Station before retiring, became increasingly childlike as the condition progressed.

She said: “He was so spontaneous and I would almost have to tell him off.

“John would also get aggressive.

“At the beginning I could calm him down, but I just could not at the end.

“The medicine worked at first, but it eventually wears off and that is when John started to decline rapidly.”

Mrs Foynes said she now finds it hard to grieve for her husband.

She said: “You do that when they are alive and it is only when they have gone that you realise you have been doing it.

“He was such a happy man, despite not having the easiest of lives, and that is how I will remember him.”

Last month health watchdog NICE decided to allow access to previously denied Alzheimer’s drugs, potentially benefiting thousands of sufferers.

The institute confirmed it was extending previous recommendations for the use of three drugs – Donepezil, galantamine and rivastigmine – to include mild, as well as moderate Alzheimer’s disease.

It also recommended the use of memantine for severe disease and for some patients with moderate disease.