fMRI Assessment

No previous trial has compared dyspnoea neuronal pathways across different life-limiting disease groups. Neuroimaging research in palliative populations remains scarce despite ATS recommendations for research into neuromodulation and central processing of dyspnoeic sensations. The study uses non-parametric statistics for fMRI variables because non-normal distributions are expected given the small sample size. Prior fMRI research in vulnerable populations reported attrition rates of 15–30%, informing the study's retention feasibility threshold. Primary fMRI dependent variables are mean beta weights within bilateral regions of interest for each task's main contrast. The Empathic Accuracy Task asks participants to continuously rate the emotional state of a person in video clips. The Belief Attribution Task compares false-belief trials with false-picture trials to measure belief attribution. The Facial Affect Matching Task isolates affect perception by comparing emotion matching with identity matching. fMRI exploratory outcomes include percent signal change, latency of the BOLD response, and peak amplitude in predefined brain regions. Functional connectivity of the anterior insula wit…