Additionally, fat creates the structural components for myelin, a fatty insulating sheath that surrounds various nerve fibers, helping them carry messages more quickly. (thebettyrocker.com)
Those signals are disrupted because myelin, the insulating sheath around a nerve cell's message - transmitting axons, becomes damaged. (sciencenews.org)
The hippocampus does indeed shrink somewhat in alcoholics, Harding notes, but that's because the white matter — the insulating sheath of neurons — erodes. (sciencemag.org)