Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impaired social communication, often attributed to misreading of emotional cues. Why individuals with ASD misread emotions remains unclear. Given that terrestrial mammals rely on their sense of smell to read conspecific emotions, we hypothesized that misreading of emotional cues in ASD partially reflects altered social chemosignaling. We found no difference between typically developed (TD) and cognitively able adults with ASD at explicit detection and perception of social chemosignals. Nevertheless, TD and ASD participants dissociated in their responses to subliminal presentation of these same compounds: the undetected ‘smell of fear’ (skydiver sweat) increased physiological arousal and reduced explicit and implicit measures of trust in TD but acted opposite in ASD participants. Moreover, two different undetected synthetic putative social chemosignals increased or decreased arousal in TD but acted opposite in ASD participants. These results implicate social chemosignaling as a sensory substrate of social impairment in ASD.

中文翻译：

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自闭症谱系障碍患者对社会化学信号的反应改变

自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的特征是社交沟通障碍，通常归因于对情感线索的误读。为什么患有自闭症的人会误读情绪，目前尚不清楚。鉴于陆生哺乳动物依靠嗅觉来读取特定情绪，我们假设对ASD情绪线索的误读部分反映了社会化学信号的改变。我们发现，在明确检测和感知社会化学信号方面，典型的成人（TD）和具有认知能力的ASD成人之间没有区别。然而，TD和ASD参与者对这些化合物的潜意识呈现的反应是相互独立的：未检测到的“恐惧气味”（跳伞运动员出汗）增加了生理唤起力，减少了对TD信任的显式和内隐测量，但在ASD参与者中却表现得相反。而且，在TD中，两种不同的未发现的合成推定社会化学信号增加或减少了唤醒，但在ASD参与者中却相反。这些结果暗示了社会化学信号作为ASD中社交障碍的感觉底物。