The aim of 'Boston Clubs' is to explore scientific developments in fields that might one day contribute to a better understanding of autism and lead to treatments that will improve the lives of autistic individuals. Many lines of evidence, particularly genetic studies of multiplex families, suggest that this complex disorder is of neurobiological origin, yet we are a long way from understanding how genes predispose an individual to autism, or how epigenetic factors may tip the balance towards one form or another of this heterogeneous condition. Why so many persons with autism have trouble expressing themselves through speech is one of the deepest mysteries of human life, and one that will require scientific and technological creativity at the highest levels to resolve. A Boston Club held in November 2006 focused on the Systems Biology of Autism. Systems Biology, by its very nature, represents a powerful new paradigm  for organizing our growing knowledge of autism that could reveal entirely new lines of research.

A Boston Club titled “Social Cognition and the Olfactory Brain” was held on June 15, 2006. This meeting was aimed at understanding the structure and function of the primary and accessory olfactory systems with a special emphasis on social behaviors. Dysfunction of these systems in autism is speculative, but testable hypotheses can already be generated to investigate the impact of these systems on autistic behavior.

Social cognition is widely recognized as a core element that appears to go awry in autism; however, few attempts have been made to determine the origin of this malfunction. The ability to interact with a social group is important for survival among most mammals. The systems involved in processing, representing, and acting on social cues are likely to be some of the oldest in primate evolution, but also contain multiple pathways acquired later during phylogenesis. It is tempting to speculate that some of the evolutionary steps in creating the human social cognitive brain are recapitulated during ontogenetic development. In primates, these systems are centered on older olfactory and paraolfactory brain activities, and the visual system. Perhaps, the pathway to socialization in human beings is also centered on chemical signals during early brain development. Learning from olfactory and visual stimuli depends on bottom-up mechanisms relying mainly on salience and on top-down mechanisms linked to executive and memory functions. In young children, bottom-up processes are dominant, but innate top-down processes falling within the category of appetitive functions also play a crucial role, and joined by later developing executive top-down mechanisms, come to dominate over social cognitive development. The social deficit in autism might lie in the appetitive functions that regulate the actions and development of the toolboxes that have evolved for social interactions, such as speech, face analysis, analysis of emotional gestures, etc. It seems reasonable at this point in autism research to focus on the midline and ventral brain, through which appetitive systems work, including olfactory and paraolfactory systems.