The pons is an upper portion of the brain stem that serves as a major nerve tract that connects the two halves of the cerebellum. As such, the structure is critical in the coordination of the movements of the right and left sides of the body. Shaped similar to a horseshoe, the pons is also involved in information integration, respiration, taste, eye and head movement control, and states of arousal. Blood is supplied to the pons by the pontine arteries and the cerebellar arteries.

The horizontal section of rat brain depicted above was immunofluorescently labeled for neurofilaments with mouse anti-NF-H Non PO₄ antibodies followed by goat anti-mouse secondary antibodies conjugated to Alexa Fluor 488. In addition, glial fibrillary acidic protein (expressed in various astroglia and neural stem cells) was targeted with rabbit anti-GFAP antibodies visualized with goat anti-rabbit secondary antibodies conjugated to Alexa Fluor 568. Cell nuclei were labeled with the popular nuclear counterstain Hoechst 33342. Images were recorded in grayscale with a 12-bit digital camera coupled to a Nikon Eclipse 80i microscope equipped with bandpass emission fluorescence filter optical blocks. During the processing stage, individual image channels were pseudocolored with RGB values corresponding to each of the fluorophore emission spectral profiles.