Chronic misuse of alcohol results in measurable damage to the brain. Chronic drinking may be particularly damaging to the integrity of frontal white matter tracts, which can interfere with cognitive and inhibitory control that, in turn, is important to achieve and maintain abstinence. A new study has used high-resolution structural magnetic resonance (MR) scans to determine the brain's regional vulnerability to chronic alcohol abuse, finding that abstinent alcoholics have reductions in white matter pathways across the entire brain.