Brain imaging studies of the functional organization of human olfaction

Abstract

It is believed that sensory functions are organized in a hierarchical and parallel manner. The sense of smell differs in several aspects from other senses: odors can immediately elicit emotional evocations, they are remembered after a long time, and they are difficult to label. This raises the question of whether odorous stimuli may be processed differently from the other sensory stimuli. New data from brain imaging studies suggest that this is not the case and that the specific characteristics of the sense of smell can be attributed to the engagement of limbic structures at an early stage in the signal processing.