running between the midbrain and the pons in alcoholics than controls (Chanraud et al., 2009). Together, these DTI studies indicate a frontal selectivity to white matter damage in the context of widespread microstructural degradation of white matter systems (Pfefferbaum et al., 2006) and initial evidence that white matter tracts of the corticopontine pathway are also compromised. A caveat is the observation from one study showing relative preservation of corticocerebellar fiber systems in alcoholics (Pfefferbaum et al., 2009). Such preservation may be an avenue to enable invoking cerebellar systems in compensatory efforts, as observed in functional imaging studies (cf., Sullivan and Pfefferbaum, 2005).
