Sleep
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Sleep-deprivation experiments suggest that sleep loss increases pain sensitivity. It is unclear from preliminary studies, however, whether sleep-related processes are directly associated with pain perception or whether hyperalgesia is due to the secondary effects of sleep deprivation and/or demand characteristics. Consequently, we sought to evaluate relationships between sleep architecture and laboratory measures of pain processing in healthy women, sleeping under normal conditions. ⋯ These data are the first to demonstrate a relationship between individual variation in rapid eye movement sleep and pain-modulatory processes. The results have implications for the etiology of pain disorders and suggest that neurobiologic substrates regulating sleep may also play a role in central pain processing.