(Press-News.org) Your breath is one of a kind. A study published June 12 in the Cell Press journal Current Biology demonstrated that scientists can identify individuals based solely on their breathing patterns with 96.8% accuracy. These nasal respiratory “fingerprints” also offer insights into physical and mental health.
The research stemmed from the lab’s interest in olfaction, or the sense of smell. In mammals, the brain processes odor information during inhalation. This link between the brain and breathing led researchers to wonder: since every brain is unique, wouldn’t each person’s breathing pattern reflect that?
To test the idea, the team developed a lightweight wearable device that tracks nasal airflow continuously for 24 hours using soft tubes placed under the nostrils. Most breathing tests last just one to 20 minutes, focusing on evaluating lung function or diagnosing disease. But those brief snapshots aren’t enough to capture subtle patterns.
“You would think that breathing has been measured and analyzed in every way,” says author Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. “Yet we stumbled upon a completely new way to look at respiration. We consider this as a brain readout.”
Sobel’s team fitted 100 healthy young adults with the device and asked them to go about their daily lives. Using the collected data, the team identified individuals using only their breathing patterns with high accuracy. This high-level accuracy remained consistent across multiple retests conducted over a two-year period, rivaling the precision of some voice recognition technologies.
“I thought it would be really hard to identify someone because everyone is doing different things, like running, studying, or resting,” says author Timna Soroka of the Weizmann Institute of Science. “But it turns out their breathing patterns were remarkably distinct.”
Moreover, the study found that these respiratory fingerprints correlated with a person’s body mass index, sleep-wake cycle, levels of depression and anxiety, and even behavioral traits. For example, participants who scored relatively higher on anxiety questionnaires had shorter inhales 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 conditions. The results suggest that long-term nasal airflow monitoring may serve as a window into physical and emotional well-being.
“We intuitively assume that how depressed or anxious you are changes the way you breathe,” says Sobel. “But it might be the other way around. Perhaps the way you breathe makes you anxious or depressed. If that’s true, we might be able to change the way you breathe to change those conditions.”
The current device still faces real-world challenges. A tube that runs under the nose is often associated with illness and may deter adoption. The device also doesn’t account for mouth breathing and can slip out of place when sleeping. The team aims to design a more discreet and comfortable version for everyday use.
Soroka and Sobel are already investigating whether people can mimic healthy breathing patterns to improve their mental and emotional states. “We definitely want to go beyond diagnostics to treatment, and we are cautiously optimistic,” says Sobel.
###
Current Biology, Soroka et al.: “Humans have nasal respiratory fingerprints.” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)00583-4
Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.
END
The population across developed countries is getting older and the associated frailty and debilitation are becoming major health problems. This gradual muscle loss is accelerated by the poor capacity to repair damage and injury, especially after falls or surgeries.
Low muscle mass in the elderly — known as sarcopenia — leads to increased frailty and movement problems. Patients with sarcopenia are more likely to be hospitalized and develop other comorbidities, largely due to falls and fractures that tend to create health declines that quickly spiral out of control.
“We knew that a major contributor is the muscle stem cells that are needed to repair ...
All of us produce a growth factor – called IL-15 – which effectively protects us from cancers. It’s role is to boost the production of immune cells that can rapidly detect and kill cancer cells when they first appear. One of these cell-types is appropriately called Natural Killer Cells.
The problem is that cancer cells evolve numerous strategies to suppress immune cells like NK cells, even when these cancer cell are producing the immune boosting factor IL-15, and too often the cancer cells win. ...
Gland, Switzerland (IUCN) –Experts from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) have analysed how targeted management of invasive alien species (IAS) can reduce extinction risks for threatened species across the European Union (EU), in line with the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.
Published in the open-access journal NeoBiota, and funded by the European Commission, a new study identifies where and how targeted action against IAS (species that have been introduced to areas outside their ...
About The Study: In this cross-sectional study, U.S. drug overdose death rates entered a new wave of sustained deceleration in 2023 after 2 decades of increase. This shift may reflect changes in drug markets, treatment access, harm reduction efforts, and population-level risk. Although the decline is encouraging, persistent disparities highlight the need for targeted interventions and improved understanding of the underlying drivers.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Lori Ann Post, PhD, email lori.post@northwestern.edu.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The ...
About The Study: This study found that initiating fecal immunochemical test screening at age 40 to 49 was associated with further reduction in colorectal cancer (CRC) mortality and incidence compared with starting screening at age 50. These results provide strong empirical support for lowering the CRC screening age, with substantial public health implications.
Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Tony Hsiu-Hsi Chen, PhD, email chenlin@ntu.edu.tw.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2025.1433)
Editor’s ...
By Benjamin Boettner
(BOSTON) — About 30% of all respiratory tract infections are caused by coronaviruses, leading to widespread illnesses and, in some cases, to epidemic and even pandemic outbreaks, as we experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the development of groundbreaking technology that enables the design of prophylactic vaccines, access to those vaccines is not equal across the globe, especially in low-resource countries, and also other hesitations prevent their adoption.
In addition, coronavirus variants are emerging ...
Out-of-body experiences – where people feel like spirits disconnected from their physical form – may be a coping mechanism triggered by trauma or other overwhelming stress, new University of Virginia School of Medicine research suggests.
That idea challenges the common assumption that out-of-body experiences, or OBEs, are solely a symptom of mental illness. Based on data from more than 500 people, the researchers, including UVA Health’s Marina Weiler, PhD, instead argue for a more nuanced perspective: that OBEs may represent an underlying issue that could be a better treatment target than the out-of-body experiences ...
WASHINGTON — In a new study, researchers carried out the most extensive coordinated comparison of optical clocks to date by operating clocks and the links connecting them simultaneously across six countries. Spanning thousands of kilometers, the experiment represents a significant step toward redefining the second and ultimately establishing a global optical time scale.
“The accurate time and frequency signals provided by atomic clocks are essential for many everyday technologies — like GPS, managing power grids and keeping financial transactions in sync,” said Helen Margolis, head of time and frequency ...
A third of the world’s population struggles with water scarcity. In many of these areas, fog holds water that could provide a lifeline — if only it could be captured.
Harvesting that water more efficiently has become the work of researchers from two colleges at Virginia Tech, who recently improved on their original fog harp design with a model that more closely resembles another musical instrument: a guitar. Their latest findings have been published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Harvesting water from resources such as fog is not a new idea. Archaeologists have found evidence of ancient ...
We live in the age of -omics. We have genomics to study complete sets of DNA. We have proteomics focused on all the proteins within our cells. And we have metabolomics for metabolites like sugars and lipids. Despite their massive reach and intense focus, these fields have blind spots. They’re both in the margins and all around us.
Today, we know we’re as much a product of our surroundings as our genetics. The question then becomes, “How do we measure the impacts of all these external factors in conjunction with one another—and with the biology ...
