An accumulating body of evidence indicates a tight relationship between the 
endocrine system and abnormal social behavior. Two evolutionarily conserved 
hypothalamic peptides, oxytocin and arginine-vasopressin, because of their 
extensively documented function in supporting and regulating affiliative and 
socio-emotional responses, have attracted great interest for their critical 
implications for autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A large number of controlled 
trials demonstrated that exogenous oxytocin or arginine-vasopressin 
administration can mitigate social behavior impairment in ASD. Furthermore, 
there exists long-standing evidence of severe socioemotional dysfunctions after 
hypothalamic lesions in animals and humans. However, despite the major role of 
the hypothalamus for the synthesis and release of oxytocin and vasopressin, and 
the evident hypothalamic implication in affiliative behavior in animals and 
humans, a rather small number of neuroimaging studies showed an association 
between this region and socioemotional responses in ASD. This review aims to 
provide a critical synthesis of evidences linking alterations of the 
hypothalamus with impaired social cognition and behavior in ASD by integrating 
results of both anatomical and functional studies in individuals with ASD as 
well as in healthy carriers of oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genetic risk variant for 
ASD. Current findings, although limited, indicate that morphofunctional 
anomalies are implicated in the pathophysiology of ASD and call for further 
investigations aiming to elucidate anatomical and functional properties of 
hypothalamic nuclei underlying atypical socioemotional behavior in ASD.