figure 5.40 From nose to brain A series of processing steps leads from nose to brain, that is, from odorants entering the nose to the experience of smell that results from neural processing in the brain. Sensory receptors that are activated by odorants (1) send signals to the olfactory bulbs (2), which in turn send signals to the olfactory cortex (3). The olfactory cortex is interconnected with the thamalus (4), a “relay station” for information processing near the center of the brain. Both through the thalamus, and directly, the olfactory cortex is connected with regions near the front of the brain for further processing (5).