A new study suggests that your breathing might be as unique as your fingerprint. A two-year research project out of Israel's Weizmann Institute rigged 100 young adults with nasal airflow tubes throughout their daily routines. What emerged was a surprise: Each person's pattern of breaths—inhalations, exhalations, and even the pauses in between—form what the study in Current Biology calls a "nasal respiratory fingerprint" that machines can match with nearly 97% accuracy, reports the London Times.
The idea that a person's breath might function as a sort of fingerprint has been around for a while, but "there was no convenient way to measure it until now," study researcher Timna Soroka tells Science Alert. "The development of a tiny wearable device capable of recording over extended periods allowed us to measure 100 participants over 24 hours. This, in turn, enabled us to present the concept in a much more compelling way."
The New York Times reports that the applications could be profound. For example, researchers also had the study participants fill out a questionnaire about their well-being, and certain breathing patterns seemed to show up regularly among those who had high scores for anxiety. It raises the possibility that breath monitoring could one day be a diagnostic tool for certain ailments. (More discoveries stories.)