EXPLAIN · SIGNATURE
08Do distinct physiological contexts precede a recurring multidomain signature?
Different contexts may converge on coordinated change across function, or they may produce unrelated symptoms. Retrospective clustering can be driven by recall, dense sampling during illness, or repeated events from one person.
POPULATION / COMPARATOR
Who or what should be compared?
Participants with repeated baseline, context, functional, and recovery measurements; event windows remain nested within people and are separated into discovery and held-out confirmation sets.
STUDY DESIGN
How could the question be tested?
Define a multidomain signature before analysis; use time-lagged, multilevel models that preserve events within people, separate context classes, include negative and discordant windows, and test prediction out of sample. Multiple events in one person are not independent cases.
EVIDENCE GATE
What would support the proposed link?
the context precedes rather than follows the signature, the within-person pattern predicts an independent window above baseline variability, and the result survives exclusion of dominant individuals, correlated events, and alternative context definitions.
STOP RULE
What would weaken it?
the signature is defined after seeing the event, disappears in negative or discordant windows, is driven by one person or one densely sampled episode, or fails out-of-sample prediction.