Take a big inhale through your nose. Now, exhale.
Breathing may seem simple, but it's controlled by a complex brain network. Each inhale gives the human brain information about the external world. And now, a new research paper in the journal Current Biology suggests that humans have unique breathing patterns, almost like nasal "fingerprints."
One of the study authors, neurobiologist Noam Sobel says the idea that people might have these individual patterns isn't entirely novel.
"Many things are very common across all our brains, but at the end of the day, you have your unique brain," Sobel says. "And since so much of the brain is involved in this process, we hypothesize that, therefore, respiration would also be unique."
But researchers didn't have a way to test this theory — until PhD student Timna Soroka and Sobel's team at the Weizmann Institute of Science developed a new device.
It looks like a small oxygen tube. For the study, 100 participants wore continuously for 24 hours while they went about their daily activities. When the researchers analyzed the data, they saw that each person had a different nasal airflow pattern.
They also saw that those breathing patterns could predict measures of physical and mental health, like sleep, anxiety and depression.
Sobel says this insight opens up a chicken-and-egg problem: Namely, whether changing the way a person breathes could change health.
"The way cooler outcome is not 'you breathe this way because you're depressed,' but rather, 'you're depressed because you breathe this way,'" he says. "And if that's true ... can we teach you to breathe, you know, to be less depressed or to or to be less anxious?"
While researchers wouldn't recommend you hold your your breath until they determine which is true, the study is as a good reminder to take a moment to breathe today.
Questions about the science behind your brain and body? Email us at shortwave@npr.org – we'd love to hear your ideas!
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This episode was produced by Berly McCoy and Jeffrey Pierre. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez, Justine Kenin and Christopher Intagliata. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Tiffany Vera-Castro.
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