Latest news with #NoamSobel
India Today
19-06-2025
- Health
- India Today
Just like fingerprints, your breath is unique: Study
Exciting and really groundbreaking research has shown that all of us breathe differently, just like we all have different fingerprints. The study published in Current Biology shows that individual patterns of inhalation and exhalation can be used as a personalised "breathprint", identified with almost 97 per cent from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel worked together to develop a small wearable device that could monitor airflow through the person's nose. They tested it on 97 adults for 24 hours. The device could even correctly identify people with 43 per cent accuracy in the first hour, increasing to 96.8 per cent after 24 seems so simple, but it is strongly tied to our brain," said Noam Sobel, a neuroscientist and one of the researchers. "We determined the pattern of breathing at the nose is individual to the person and part of the distribution of their emotions and health." The researchers utilised a unique protocol of analysis, called BreathMetrics, to investigate 24 distinctive characteristics of nasal breathing. In addition to being able to identify the nasal breathing phenotypes, the researchers were also able to indicate if the traits of breathing would reveal some psychopathology (i.e., if the person has anxiety) or indicate their body mass index (BMI) was lower or higher based on their breathing traits. For example, a person more prone to anxiety while asleep had breath cycles noted to be shorter, and breath patterns showed uneven Soroka, the lead scientist, explained that, beyond the mechanics of breathing, the integrative networking of the brain impacts breathing. "Breathing is not just a mechanical process but is impacted by brain function and activity. "So far, breath has shown potential for diagnosis," she the study findings, it appears that breathing patterns could potentially be used to diagnose psychopathologies like anxiety and physical issues like obesity without needing invasive the word 'breathprint' has been used within the research community for many years in respiratory science, the research team was unable to test the emerging theory due to a lack of technology. With the small wearable device they were able to use for this research, they can now present this theory using data for the first the future, scientists want to study how this technology can be applied to medical diagnostics and treatments. Can we avoid disease by looking at breathing? Can we enhance mental wellness by simply changing our breath?Time will tell - and research. But one thing seems certain: every breath we take may be telling a story that science is just beginning to decipher.
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Scientists say your breathing pattern may reveal identity, mood, and health
Thought your fingerprint was unique? Turns out, your breath is just as telling. In a groundbreaking study, scientists have found that each person's breathing pattern is distinct enough to serve as a kind of respiratory fingerprint. Careful analysis of those patterns over a full day allowed researchers to identify individuals with nearly 96.8 percent accuracy, underscoring just how unique our breath really is. The research originated from the lab's focus on olfaction — the sense of smell. In mammals, the brain processes scent during inhalation, tying breathing closely to brain activity. This connection sparked a question: if every brain is unique, could our breathing patterns reveal that individuality? To test their hypothesis, the team designed a lightweight wearable device that continuously monitors nasal airflow, using soft, flexible tubes positioned just beneath the nostrils. The team, led by brain scientist Timna Soroka at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, discovered that our breath isn't just a mechanical reflex. It's shaped by a complex neural network in the brain and subtly influenced by everything from physical activity to emotional state. Discreet device on the nape of the neck, which recorded airflow through soft tubes connected to the nose. Credit-Soroka et al. Current Biology'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.' Using a device that fits neatly over the nose, the researchers monitored the breathing patterns of 100 healthy young adults as they went about their daily lives, capturing a detailed log of 24 respiratory parameters. Even just an hour of recorded breathing allowed for moderate identification, but with a full day's worth of data, the uniqueness of each person's breath pattern became strikingly clear. What's more, these breathing signatures didn't just point to identity. They also hinted at broader health markers, from body mass index, sleep-wake cycle, levels of depression and anxiety, and even behavioral traits. Participants with self-reported anxiety, for instance, showed shorter inhales and greater variability during sleep, opening new avenues for mental health diagnostics through breath alone. Researchers, however, noted that none of the participants met clinical diagnostic criteria for mental or behavioral conditions. '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 has practical hurdles to overcome. Its visible nasal tube can evoke associations with illness, potentially discouraging everyday use. It also doesn't track mouth breathing and can shift during sleep. The team is now working on a more discreet, user-friendly design to make long-term wear more comfortable and appealing. The researchers 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. This research has been published in Current Biology.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Scientists develop breath test to ID people and check health
Breathing into a bag or tube usually means you've been pulled over by police who want to check for drinking and driving can lead to the loss of a driving licence or even imprisonment. But a team of scientists have found every breath you take to be like a fingerprint that discloses who you are with 97% accuracy and can be assessed for "insights" into physical and even mental health. "You would think that breathing has been measured and analyzed in every way," said Noam Sobel, one of a team of researchers based at the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv who said they "stumbled upon a completely new way to look at respiration" they describe as "a brain readout." The researchers tracked breathing in 100 "healthy young adults" over 24 hours using a "lightweight wearable device" they made and found that the "high-level accuracy" of the tests "remained consistent across multiple retests conducted over a two-year period." Most breathing tests last less than half an hour, meaning such "brief snapshots" cannot assess "subtle patterns," according to the team, which had its findings published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology. "I thought it would be really hard to identify someone because everyone is doing different things, like running, studying, or resting," said researcher Timna Soroka. But according to the team, the breathing test rivals "the precision of some voice recognition technologies." "It turns out their breathing patterns were remarkably distinct," Soroka said, following the longer-than-usual test, which not only could identify people but provide signals related to health. The Israel-based team said that the tests showed breathing to be "correlated with a person's body mass index, sleep-wake cycle, levels of depression and anxiety, and even behavioural traits." "For example, participants who scored relatively higher on anxiety questionnaires had shorter inhales and more variability in the pauses between breaths during sleep," the researchers reported. The team's laboratory's prior investigations of olfaction in animals got them thinking that since mammals' brains process odour information during inhalation, there could be some value in testing whether there people have a unique breathing pattern in the same way each brain is unique. The findings follow the development over the past decade of gadgets that can identify people by how they walk, with so-called gait recognition technology used by police in China in street cameras since at least 2018. It all means that with every breath you take and every move you make, they might some day be watching - and identifying - you.
National Geographic
12-06-2025
- Health
- National Geographic
Your breathing pattern is unique like your fingerprint—and may help predict health issues
In a new study, scientists identified people based only on their breathing pattern with almost 97 percent accuracy—and soon might be able to analyze yours to diagnose what ails you. Colored 3D computed tomography (CT) scan of the spaces within the facial bones surrounding the nasal cavity. Illustration by Vsevolod Zviryk, Science Photo Library Everyone's breathing pattern is unique, and soon scientists might be able to analyze yours to diagnose what ails you. Scientists were able to identify individual people based just on their breathing pattern with 96.8 percent accuracy, and different patterns corresponded to differences in physical and mental traits, according to a new study in Current Biology. Because it happens subconsciously, breathing may seem simple, but it's controlled by a complex brain network. 'Respiration has to be coordinated with almost everything,' says Noam Sobel, neurobiologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and co-author of the new study. From timing our breathing when we speak, to when we swim, the respiratory system is often negotiating with various parts of the brain. 'Although breathing starts with this breathing center in the brain stem, it actually ends up being coordinated with a humongous chunk of your brain,' says Sobel. Those different parts of the brain include regions responsible for language, emotion, and motor skills. Inhaling drives specific waves in the brain's memory center that help consolidate memories. When we inhale, pressure in the nasal cavity changes, which excites neurons that send signals to the brain, according to Detlef Heck, a University of Minnesota neuroscientist who was not involved with the new research. The moment of transition from breathing out to breathing in might have a sort of reset effect in the brain, so changing the breath can help stress regulation and cognitive performance. Slow breathing techniques are used to reduce stress and anxiety, alter mood, and changing breathing patterns can affect cognitive ability and focus. Scientists are still learning about how the brain shapes breath, how breath shapes the brain, and what information this could one day tell doctors about a patient's health. Unique breath 'fingerprints' The team conducting the new research mostly studies the brain-breath connection in olfaction, or how taking in scents through the nose brings information directly to the brain to process. Since every brain is unique, the study authors hypothesized that the respiratory patterns shaped by those brains would also be unique. To test their hypothesis, the team developed a lightweight, wearable tube that fit inside the participant's nose and continuously tracked nasal airflow over 24 hours. A hundred healthy young adults wore the nasal tube device while going about their daily lives, and logged their activities in a cell phone app. Study participants all had remarkably distinct breathing patterns, according to the results. The research team was able to identify individuals from only their breathing patterns with 96.8 percent accuracy using a machine learning analysis. This level of accuracy was consistent across multiple retests over two years, meaning the test's precision rivals that of some voice recognition technologies. 'It's very rare that you can predict a biological process so accurately,' says Sobel. Each respiratory 'fingerprint' also provided insights into each person's mental and physical condition, since certain breathing patterns correlated with body mass index, sleep-wake cycle, and depression and anxiety. Participants who had higher anxiety levels based on questionnaire responses, for example, tended to have shorter inhales and more varied pauses between breaths while sleeping. Pauses between breaths turned out to be an especially meaningful parameter: one person might consistently pause for one second after each breath, while another person might sometimes pause for one second and other times pause for five seconds. This variability statistic was a powerful tool in the predictive models, says Sobel. Nasal airflow is so closely connected to the brain because of the evolution of the sense of smell, scientists theorize. Nasal breathing has also been linked to how we form mental images, for example, and smell is associated with how we store memories. That may be because smell is the oldest sensory system to exist in mammals, says Sobel, and it's considered a sort of evolutionary scaffolding organizing the evolution of the structure of the mammalian brain. Although modern humans are more visually-oriented, connections between nasal breathing and so many parts of the brain could be a mechanism left over from evolution, explains Daniel Kluger, neuroscientist at the University of Münster in Germany, who was not involved with the new research. In studies on performance in visual and spatial tasks—having nothing to do with smell—people tend to perform better while inhaling than while exhaling. This could be because inhalation makes us more sensitive toward any sensory inputs, not only smell, says Kluger, so we're more likely to perceive visual, auditory, and tactile information when it's presented while we're breathing in. 'You're in a particular bodily state [while inhaling] that makes you more sensitive to incoming sensory stimuli,' explains Kluger. Change your breath to change your brain? Measuring the link between breathing patterns and health conditions on more people could help develop breath analysis as a diagnostic tool, say scientists. 'This is a super exciting finding, but someone needs to show it also works for other [groups],' says Heck, 'but in general I think this is a very promising direction.' The study authors are now testing their device and analysis method to screen for diseases. The findings also raise questions about whether changing breath patterns could change what's going on in the brain. 'There's a chicken and egg question here, of what drove what: are you breathing this way because you're depressed, or are you depressed because you breathe this way?' asks Sobel. 'If it's the latter, then that's potentially exciting because that opens paths to intervention—so, can I teach you to breathe in a way that will make you less depressed or less anxious?'
