T his chapter provides some historical perspective on autism research and discusses some of the key challenges facing autism research as we move forward. These challenges include difficulty in synthesizing highly technical and specialized findings from various methods and problems in appropriately communicating the scientific advances to the public. The challenges also include the need to translate understanding of autism’s developmental neurobiology into treatments that can produce more rapid changes in the lives of affected individuals. There are also challenges related to the dissemination and implementation of new practices that arise from research findings. We attempt to underscore some of the common threads, such as underconnectivity theory, from this research that demonstrate the growing consensus across different methods, investigators, and topics. In order to do so, we also address some of the key concepts, such as different meanings of “cause” and understanding of the clinical syndrome, that aid in understanding how the different perspectives fit together to describe a central theme. The remainder of this chapter highlights key aspects of the preceding chapters.