Is a wearable nasal logger a thing of the future?

Humans have unique and stable respiratory fingerprints. Using a wearable device, researchers recorded 24-hour nasal airflow from 97 participants and found that individuals could be identified with up to 90.7% accuracy during wakefulness. This accuracy remained high even months later, indicating the stability of these patterns over time.

Breathing data could distinguish between wake and sleep, correlate with BMI, and even predict scores on standard measures of depression, anxiety, and autism-related traits, suggesting nasal airflow contains rich cognitive and emotional information.

_{Soroka, T., Ravia, A., Snitz, K., Weiss, T., Perl, O. and Sobel, N., 2025.x Humans have nasal respiratory fingerprints. Current Biology, 35 (13), pp.3011–3021.e3 bit.ly/46xXWYQ}

After all, we do know that the nose sends the brain detailed data about what we smell and how air moves, which helps the brain regulate breathing, emotional responses, sensory processing, and even memory and attention.

Ralph Fiennes noted that when portraying Voldemort, the overall physical and psychological demands of the role, including limited breathing due to prosthetics, created a fatiguing experience. Let's hope all restricted airflow does not leave us all cold, detached, and deeply unstable like Voldemort.