https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01835-0 Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Advertisement Advertisement Nature * View all journals * Search * Log in * Explore content * About the journal * Publish with us * Subscribe * Sign up for alerts * RSS feed 1. nature 2. news 3. article * NEWS * 12 June 2025 How you breathe is like a fingerprint that can identify you Your inhalation and exhalation pattern is not only unique to you, it can be a marker of your physical and mental state, study suggests. By * Humberto Basilio 1. Humberto Basilio View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar * Twitter * Facebook * Email Hundreds of yoga enthusiasts hold cobra pose in a park. Every breath you take ... could add to a breathing pattern that is unique to you, a study finds.Credit: Anusak Laowilas/NurPhoto via Getty Like the swirls in fingerprints, a person's breathing pattern might be unique to them -- offering a way not only to identify individuals, but also to identify some of their physical and mental traits. A team of researchers measured the breathing of 97 healthy people for 24 hours, and found that they could identify participants with relatively high accuracy from their breathing pattern alone. What's more, they found that these patterns can be correlated with body-mass index (BMI) and signs of depression and anxiety. "In a way, we're reading the mind through the nose," says co-author Noam Sobel, a neurobiologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. "This could be a very powerful diagnostic tool." The team published its study today in Current Biology^1. Taking a breath Breathing is deeply connected to the brain. Every inhalation and exhalation is coordinated to supply the oxygen needed for the brain to manage the body's systems. Sobel and his team wondered: if every brain functions differently, shouldn't every person's breathing be unique, too? To test this, the researchers developed a custom, wearable device that records airflow through each of a person's nostrils. Mounted on the back of the neck, the device, which has tubes fitted under the nose, tracks people's breathing during their everyday routines, both while they are awake and while they are asleep. Top: close-up of a person's nose with breathing tubes; bottom: a small silicon-encased device on the person's neck, connected to breathing tubes. Researchers measured study participants' breathing patterns over 24 hours, using a custom device that sits on the back of the neck. Credit: Soroka et al., Current Biology To characterize a person's breath pattern, the team extracted 24 parameters from the airflow data, including duration of inhalation and exhalation and airflow asymmetry between nostrils. They separated the periods when participants were awake and asleep, and trained a machine-learning algorithm with the data. When 42 of the participants came back to the laboratory weeks, months and even two years later, to take part in another 24-hour measurement, the trained algorithm could identify them from their breath patterns. Data from periods when the participants were awake gave more accurate results than did those from sleeping periods, but when the researchers used a 100-parameter characterization of a full data set instead of one using 24 parameters, they could pick individuals out with 96.8% accuracy. Given this success, Sobel and his colleagues began wondering whether they could learn more from the breath patterns. Healthy breathing The researchers collected data on the participants' BMIs, and from questionnaires that assess levels of depression and anxiety. An analysis found correlations between this information and the breathing patterns, even though most participants had low-level scores on the questionnaires. For instance, the breathing profiles during sleep of people with higher BMIs were different from those of people with lower BMIs. And those who scored higher on the questionnaires for anxiety or depression had distinct patterns in how they inhaled and exhaled. Enjoying our latest content? Login or create an account to continue * Access the most recent journalism from Nature's award-winning team * Explore the latest features & opinion covering groundbreaking research Access through your institution or Sign in or create an account # Continue with Google # Continue with ORCiD doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01835-0 References 1. Soroka, T. et al. Curr. Biol. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.cub.2025.05.008 (2025). Article Google Scholar Download references Reprints and permissions Related Articles * [d41586-025] An AI revolution is brewing in medicine. 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What will it look like? * [d41586-025] Google AI could soon use a person's cough to diagnose disease * [d41586-025] How fingerprints get their one-of-a-kind swirls * [d41586-025] The controversial company using DNA to sketch the faces of criminals Subjects * Physiology * Human behaviour * Computer science Advertisement Sign up to Nature Briefing An essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, delivered to your inbox every weekday. Email address [ ] [ ] Yes! Sign me up to receive the daily Nature Briefing email. I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Nature and Springer Nature Limited Privacy Policy. Sign up Close Nature Briefing Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter -- what matters in science, free to your inbox daily. Email address [ ] Sign up [ ] I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Nature and Springer Nature Limited Privacy Policy. Close Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. 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