Your breathing says a lot about you, study reveals

Every breath is unique. A team of scientists has demonstrated that it is possible to identify people—with 96.8% accuracy—based solely on their breathing pattern.

In addition, the mechanism leaves "marks" that can reveal information about the person's physical and mental health.

In mammals, the brain processes olfactory information during inhalation. This connection between the brain and breathing led researchers to wonder: Since each brain is unique, wouldn't that be reflected in each person's breathing pattern? EFE reports.

To test this idea, they designed a lightweight, portable device that records nasal airflow continuously for 24 hours using flexible tubes placed under the nostrils.

Most breathing tests last between one and twenty minutes and focus on assessing lung function or diagnosing diseases, but those brief snapshots aren't enough to capture subtle patterns.

“You might think that breathing has been measured and analyzed in every possible way,” says author Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, “but we stumbled upon a completely new way of looking at breathing—a reading of the brain.”

The study authors, who published the results in the journal Current Biology, fitted 100 healthy young adults with the device and asked them to go about their daily lives.

With the collected data, they identified people using only their breathing patterns with great accuracy.

This high level of accuracy remained consistent across multiple repeated tests conducted over a two-year period, rivaling the accuracy of some speech recognition technologies.

“I thought it would be very difficult to identify someone because everyone does different things, like running, studying, or resting, but it turns out their breathing patterns were remarkably distinct,” explains author Timna Soroka of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

The study also found that respiratory signatures correlated with a person's body mass index, sleep-wake cycle, depression and anxiety levels, and even behavioral traits.

For example, participants who scored relatively higher on anxiety questionnaires had shorter inhalations and more variability in the pauses between breaths during sleep.

Soroka noted that none of the participants met clinical diagnostic criteria for mental or behavioral disorders.

For the authors, these results suggest that long-term monitoring of nasal airflow can serve as an indicator of physical and emotional well-being.

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The study also found that respiratory signatures correlated with a person's body mass index, sleep-wake cycle, depression and anxiety levels, and even behavioral traits.