Smell, Anxiety, and Cognition — Why the Nose Has Direct Access to the Brain
By Dr. Kione Teta, ND, LAc · May 9, 2026 · Small Signal, Big Gains - Evidence-Based Self Care Series (Smell, Anxiety, and Cognition) - Part 1: 5(10)
Smell is the most underestimated sense in medicine. Vision gets the prestige. Hearing gets the poetry. Smell gets reduced to candles and marketing. Yet from a neurobiological perspective, olfaction is unique: it is the only sensory system with direct access to the limbic brain, bypassing the thalamus entirely.
That architectural fact explains why scent can change mood, attention, and stress levels almost instantly—and why it deserves more respect than it gets.
Most sensory information is filtered through the thalamus before reaching higher brain centers. Smell is not. Olfactory neurons project directly to structures involved in emotion, memory, and autonomic regulation, including:
This is the opening of the article. The full piece is on Kione's Substack.