As your grandparents get older, you might have started to notice signs of dementia or Alzheimer's disease in them. And to give us an idea of how these degenerative diseases actually affect sufferers, Alzheimer's Research UK has launched a dementia app on Facebook, to help people see things from the viewpoint of sufferers.
The app, called FaceDementia, runs separately from your account, but uses its information to show you a bit about yourself before displaying, quite simply, a representation of how people's minds disintegrate as dementia worsens. Memories might become confused, friends and family will become strangers to you, and simple tasks will become impossible.
Rebecca Wood, who is chief executive of Alzheimer's Reasearch UK, told the BBC: 'Facebook's appeal is that it can gather your friends and family and keep them close, with memories and contacts all contained within one space. It also develops a diary of your life since you joined the site and documents your thoughts and musings during that time.'
'We wanted to use these Facebook features to illustrate how those thoughts and memories can be confused, or forgotten all together, as experienced by some of the hundreds of thousands of people across the UK living with dementia.'
Most importantly, the simulation points out that dementia – which currently affects 820,000 people in the UK – is 'not a normal part of ageing' and that it's a disease that could potentially be cured with the right research.
Check out the app here: www.facedementia.org
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.