Olfaction is the oldest and most sensitive sensory system for most organisms to understand the environment, and it is closely related to emotions. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of the field of mechanisms by which olfaction affects emotion, aiming to summarize and analyze the current state, trends and key issues of the mechanism of olfaction effects on emotion. Olfaction is the most likely sense to trigger emotional responses in the five senses. In-depth study of the relationship between smell and emotion can help us to better understand the mechanism of emotion regulation, and provide new intervention and treatment methods for the treatment of related diseases. This review includes several key aspects of olfactory senses and emotion, such as the physiological basis of smell, the neural mechanism of emotion and the interaction mechanism between smell and emotion, hoping to be of great help in studying the mechanism of olfactory influence on emotion and clinical intervention in the treatment of diseases.
