Your Breath Might Be a Window Into Your Brain—Here’s What It’s Telling You

Breathing is so automatic we rarely give it a second thought. But a new study suggests that our breathing patterns may hold hidden insights about our mental state—possibly even acting like a fingerprint for our brains.

At the core of this research is a new nasal device that monitors airflow in and out of each nostril at a high rate of detail. Unlike standard medical equipment, this tech can pick up subtle, unconscious patterns in how we breathe. Researchers tracked 24 separate breathing features—things like airflow rate, nostril switching patterns, and the length of pauses between breaths.

The results were striking. When 100 participants wore the device for a full 24 hours, their breathing data turned out to be surprisingly unique. A machine learning model was able to identify individuals with over 90% accuracy, based solely on their breathing. Even after weeks or years, those breathing “fingerprints” remained stable.

But here’s where things got really interesting: our mental and emotional states appeared to influence these patterns.

How Mood and Mind Influence the Breath

The researchers discovered strong connections between breathing features and psychological measures. People with higher scores on depression and anxiety scales showed distinct differences in how they breathed. For example, individuals with more depressive symptoms had faster inhalation peaks, while those with higher anxiety showed more variation in their breathing pauses.

These weren’t people with clinical diagnoses—just varying levels of symptoms found in the general population. Even traits linked to autism spectrum features were reflected in specific breathing markers, such as how often a person paused during inhalation.

This suggests that brain states—depression, anxiety, emotional reactivity—may leave measurable traces in the body’s most basic function. These subtle variations likely come from deep brain circuits that control breathing, many of which are also involved in emotion regulation and cognitive processing.

A Future Tool for Mental Health Monitoring?

While no one is suggesting we’ll soon use breathing to unlock smartphones, the idea of integrating this technology into sleep devices like CPAP machines holds real promise. Such integration could allow continuous monitoring of mood-related physiological changes—before someone even notices symptoms.

This could revolutionize how we think about mental health tracking. Instead of relying solely on self-report or periodic checkups, clinicians might one day have access to real-time data that helps predict shifts in mood or neurological state—making early intervention possible.

Breathing, it turns out, is not just about oxygen and carbon dioxide. It's a silent messenger of the brain’s inner workings.

Discover more at interventionalpsychiatry.org

References

1. Soroka, T. et al. Humans have nasal respiratory fingerprints. Current Biology, June 12 2025. This study used 24-hour nostril airflow data to identify individuals with ≈96.8% accuracy and uncovered links between breathing patterns, BMI, depression, and anxiety cell.com+6eurekalert.org+6thetimes.co.uk+6.

2. Beck Depression Inventory. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/pi/about/publications/caregivers/practice-settings/assessment/tools/beck-depression