Sleep deprivation is everywhere. In high school, in college, in graduate school, as a parent, and as an elderly. We live in a world where achievements are prioritized oversleep, and the sleep-deprived are sometimes even praised for sacrificing their sleep for working overtime.

As students, sleep-deprivation is inevitable due to the constant academic and social demands. "Catching up on sleep during the weekend" is somewhat of a misnomer because lost sleep can never be gained back, and this conflict between school and social life are often heightened during the weekend, leading to a higher likelihood of being sleep deprived.

Interestingly, just recently on January 28, 2019, the Journal of Neuroscience published a research article on research and pain. With 25 participants in this study, the researchers measured their brain activity with an fMRI when heat was supplied to their legs. The heat, in this case, is the thermal pain stimuli. The fMRI readings were monitored for both sleep-deprived and well-rested states of each participant. The results revealed that "sleep deprivation expands the temperature range for classifying a stimulus as painful, specifically through a lowering of pain thresholds."

Specifically, they found that "acute sleep-deprivation amplifies pain reactivity within humans (male 29 and female) primary somatosensory cortex yet blunts pain-reactivity in higher-order 30 valuation and decision-making regions of the striatum and insula cortex."

Somatosensory cortex refers to the region of the brain that allows sensation of the environment, including pain. The striatum, composed of the caudate nucleus and putamen, is responsible for estimating the degree of pain. Insula cortex is involved with higher-order processing of painful stimuli. Thus, sleep deprivation leads to increased reactivity to pain while simultaneously decreasing the lower limit required to sense pain. Consequently, losing sleep elevates the sensitivity to pain when compared with adequate sleep.

This study has many implications for pain management. Perhaps as simple as changing sleep habits can alleviate some noxious symptoms in patients with chronic stress. Those without such diagnoses can also benefit from the results of this study as consistent, restful sleep may serve as a protection against pain. It would be interesting to see if sleep has the same effect on emotional pain as it did on thermal pain. It is also significant because it highlights yet another important role of sleep – an endogenous painkiller.