Every human being has a unique breathing pattern just like fingerprints
As far as humans knew, everyone had a unique fingerprint that didn't match with any other person. With even faces and habits matching each other, it was the one thing that made a person truly unique in the world, apart from their combination of genes and microbes.
However, now a new
study
published in Current Biology, claims it might just be two things that make you rare- your fingerprints and your breathing patterns. Each human has an idiosyncratic pattern to the constant inhale-exhale that counts their hours, days and years on Earth.
A team of scientists fitted people with a wearable device that monitored their nasal breathing and an analysis of the data revealed patterns that were detailed enough for the researchers to identify individuals with an accuracy of 96.8 %.
While breathing might seem like a simple process for us, it's governed by a complex and extensive brain network that is largely automatic with the exception of certain circumstances like holding breath inside water.
Additionally, the team at the Weizmann Olfaction Research Group have been analysing how the brain processes scent during inhalation. During this research, they made a small step in the direction of studying the concept of a breath-print.
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"The idea of using an individual's breathing pattern as a unique signature has been discussed for decades within the respiratory science community. You can easily see each person's uniqueness when you measure different people," Soroka told ScienceAlert.
"However, there was no convenient way to measure it until now. 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 intriguing study
Image credits: Getty Images
The device developed by the researchers monitors and logs the airflow through each nostril of the wearer. The team tasked 97 participants to wear the device for 24 hours and for the first hour itself they achieved an accurate identification rate of 43%. This accuracy only increased after 24 hours.
The resulting breath log was analysed using BreathMetrics, a protocol that examines 24 parameters of the person's nasal respiration.
The researchers not only found that a person can be identified on the basis of their breathing pattern but also understood what those patterns indicated about a person. The participants who had anxiety issues had shorter inhales and more variability in the pauses between breaths while sleeping.
Additionally, they also found that a person's breathing correlates with their BMI.
According to the team led by brain scientist Timna Soroka of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, this "respiratory fingerprint" could promote new ways to understand and treat physical and mental ailments.
"You would think that breathing has been measured and analyzed in every way. Yet we stumbled upon a completely new way to look at respiration. We consider this as a brain readout," said Noam Sobel, a neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Now, the next step will be figuring out how this research can be applied to diagnostics. "We can learn how specific breathing patterns may predict various diseases," explained Soroka. "But of course, in the future, we will examine whether we can also treat disease by modifying respiratory patterns."
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