Insomnia is a uniquely vexing medical problem. It is the most common sleep-related issue, thought to affect around 10-40% of the population in the US. So it is a challenge that affects a whole lot of us. Yet despite its prevalence, options to manage the condition are lackluster at best. Pharmaceutical interventions for insomnia are not helpful for many patients, and the chronic use of these medications comes with really nasty side effects. We know, for instance, that chronic use of these medications is associated with elevated risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Why is there such a paucity of good treatments? Perhaps because it remains rather poorly understood. Insomnia has been known and documented for thousands of years, but it has proven to be difficult to study for a number of reasons. It’s hard to develop good animal models for the condition, it’s tricky to objectively define (though there are some genetic and molecular models associated with it), and symptoms manifest quite di