I recall reading, decades ago, of a development by Soviet scientists of a technique for inducing sleep via electric current applied to, I think, the eyelids. It's used as a plot element in certain Larry Niven stories, especially A Gift from Earth. But I haven't had much luck googling it; it's confounded by a grossout story called the "Russian sleep experiment", and if I add -experiment to the search, I get a lot of random stuff but not what I'm looking for.

Do we have an article covering this? --Trovatore (talk) 07:15, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, it's a deep state rabbit hole and Google's AI gives an overview regarding "electrosleep Pavlov".[1] Modocc (talk) 14:13, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See also Cranial electrotherapy stimulation: "CES was initially studied for insomnia and called electrosleep therapy." Modocc (talk) 14:26, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Modocc. That does look like what I was looking for. I still find it a little surprising that there isn't more on this. Insomnia is a huge medical issue that could attract massive money, and this is such a simple thing. You'd expect to see, if not more use of it, then some sort of reason why, along the lines of "we couldn't reproduce the Soviet results" or "well, it sorta works sometimes but not really that well" or "it has these significant downsides", but mostly it seems to be just kinda half-ignored. --Trovatore (talk) 23:52, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I read somewhere that Niven said it doesn't work, much to his disappointment. Abductive (reasoning) 19:16, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]