The Dysfunctional Proposal

Nadine's path has crossed with assassins before. But, this time, she and her two closest friends, Alex and Kenzie have come so close to death, they are being taken into protective custody. What Nadine hadn't counted on was Melina also being there and Melina is convinced one of the trio is pregnant. Between shopping for baby supplies, a visit to the salon, Melina's pregnancy hex, and assassins hot on their trail, will any of the girls get out alive, sanity intact?

Nadine's path has crossed with assassins before. But, this time, she and her two closest friends, Alex and Kenzie have come so close to death, they are being taken into protective custody, along with Nadine's mother. Melina is convinced one of the trio is pregnant. As they struggle to stay out of the sniper's crosshairs, they must deal with Melina's pregnancy hex. Will any of the girls survive, sanity intact?

Nadine Daniels knew that Alex’s wedding was going to make the next couple of weeks hectic, but she wasn’t prepared for the non-wedding chaos. While Nadine, Alex, and Kenzie are out hunting UFOs, somebody soaked Alex’s house in jet fuel and set it on fire. They arrived at Alex’s home to find it engulfed in flames, along with the wedding dress, Nadine’s maid of honor dress, and Kenzie’s bridesmaid’s dress. The presence of their Grandfather Leon is a sinister omen. He never attends family disasters. The fact that he is whispering with Melina leaves Nadine with a knot in her stomach. Melina isn’t known for always being cooperative, but Nadine will need to talk to her to get to the bottom of this mystery, along with buying a new maid of honor dress, dealing with Kenzie’s hormonal imbalance due to pregnancy, the arrival of her mother-in-law, and the knowledge that Alex and her fiancé are going to be moving in with Nadine for a while.

Nadine Daniels is supposed to get married in one week. However, when her mother and her mother-in-law to be both show up, they bring trouble with them. As Nadine struggles to get ready for the wedding, she must also figure out who is after them and why. Or else she'll be exchanging her wedding dress for a funeral gown.

The Russian Mob didn’t firebomb the church. A freak tornado didn’t wreak havoc on the reception. Nadine Daniels managed to get married without incident. However, she soon discovers that it was only because Fate was plotting to ruin the honeymoon. Now, she and Zeke, her new husband, are on the run because his past has come back to haunt them both. As they sneak through the jungles of Belize, Nadine has to be worried about big cats, venomous snakes and a drug lord bent on revenge. Can they escape their honeymoon with their lives?

Research on visual perception in schizophrenia has a long history. However, it is only recently that it has been included in mainstream efforts to understand the cognitive neuroscience of the disorder and to assist with biomarker and treatment development (e.g., the NIMH CNTRICS and RDoC initiatives). Advances in our understanding of visual disturbances in schizophrenia can tell us about both specific computational and neurobiological abnormalities, and about the widespread computational and neurobiological abnormalities in the illness, of which visual disturbances constitute well-studied, replicable, low-level examples. Importantly, far from being a passive sensory registration process, visual perception is active, inferential, and hypothesis-generating, and therefore can provide excellent examples of breakdowns in general brain functions in schizophrenia. Despite progress made in understanding visual processing disturbances in schizophrenia, many challenges exist and many unexplored areas are in need of examination. For example, the directional relationships between perceptual and cognitive disturbances (e.g., in attention, memory, executive function, predictive coding) remain unclear in many cases, as do links with symptoms, including visual hallucinations. The effect of specific visual disturbances on multisensory integration in schizophrenia has also not been explored. In addition, few studies of vision in schizophrenia have used naturalistic stimuli, including real-world objects, and almost no studies have examined processing during interaction with objects or visual exploration, which can provide important data on functioning of the perception for action pathway. Relatedly, studies of visual processing in schizophrenia have also not been conducted within contexts that include emotional stimulation and the presence of reinforcers – characteristics of many real-world situations - and the consequences of this are likely to be an incomplete view of how and when perception is abnormal in the condition. An additional important area involves treatment of visual disturbances in schizophrenia. Two major questions regarding this are: 1) can visual processing be improved in cases where it is impaired (and by what types of interventions affecting which cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms)? and 2) what are the clinical and functional benefits of improving specific visual functions in people with schizophrenia? Other important and understudied questions concern: 1) the extent to which indices of visual functioning can serve as biomarkers such as predictors of relapse, treatment response, and/or recovery; 2) the potential role of visual functioning in diagnosing and predicting illness; 3) the extent to which some visual perception disturbances are diagnostically specific to schizophrenia; and 4) the extent to which visual disturbances are truly manifestations of disease, as opposed to aspects of normal variation that, in combination with disease, serves to modify the clinical presentation. This Frontiers Research Topic explores some of these, and other issues facing this exciting interface between vision science and schizophrenia research. We include papers that span the entire range of different Frontiers paper types, including those that are data driven (using psychophysics, electroencephalography, neuroimaging, computational and animal models, and other methods), reviews, hypotheses, theories, opinion, methods, areas of impact, and historical perspectives.

It’s nearly Thanksgiving, which is enough to cause anxiety for anyone planning a big family gathering. In Nadine Daniels’ world, it’s a reason to panic. Pregnancy hormones, exploding houses, missing friends, and six Great Danes with identity issues are just the start of the problems. As Nadine works to find out who is trying to kill her friends and family, she uncovers a vile plot that threatens to tear apart her entire world. She must battle to keep everyone safe and sane through a Thanksgiving meal that might be everyone’s last.

Aislinn Cain and the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit are being sent to the hottest place in North America to investigate mummified remains that were found in Death Valley. When Xavier Reece uncovers elemental mercury in the heart of one of the mummies, they discover there is more than Mother Nature at work. The victims have matching injuries, but only one of the bodies reveals the liquid metal, raising questions about how many killers are using the valley as a dumping ground. The team will have to use extraordinary means to connect all the victims to a single killer. However, with most of the victims unidentifiable due to the condition of the remains, their usual procedures of investigation are impossible. With 32 bodies already found, how high will the body count rise before Aislinn Cain and the SCTU can capture this killer?