The neurons contributing to your sense of smell as well as your optic nerve are more or less considered part of your brain. Loss of smell is more or less a canary.

More detail on axons:

> Each neuron in your brain has one long cable that snakes away from the main part of the cell. This cable, several times thinner than a human hair, is called an axon, and it is where electrical impulses from the neuron travel away to be received by other neurons.

https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain/brain-anatomy/axons-cable-transm...

When someone get's a nose job, do they also get brain damage as a side effect?

When they get a nose job the region of the body that contains the olfactory bulb is not touched at all since that is in the brain, not in the nose. I posted this image in another comment [0], but it seems there's a misunderstanding of anatomy here.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_system#/media/File:H...

> but it seems there's a misunderstanding of anatomy here

yes, I agree and it also is worth mentioning that it is being communicated poorly in many forums where people also misunderstand this

olfactory = smell

people, myself included, think there are filaments in our nose (the parts we can see and stick our fingers into) that this is referring to. great opportunity for more anatomically minded people to explain this better.

> people, myself included, think there are filaments in our nose (the parts we can see and stick our fingers into) that this is referring to.

The confusion may be due to the fact that olfactory sensory nerves have their cell bodies (with the smell receptors on cillia) in the nose. Like many peripheral nerve cells, these cells also extend directly into the brian via their axons. In this case, those axons extend via the olfactory tract into the olfactory bulb in the brain. These areas (tract and bulb) are where the paper indicates axon damage was found.

Our science museum, OMSI, in Portland used to have this giant nose you could crawl in and learn about it.

I don’t remember stuff explaining nerves or how smell is connected to the brain but it was fun to go inside.

Cranial nerves are often considered part of the brain. That includes olfactory n. (CN I).

More precisely, this paper addresses damage to the olfactory bulb as well as the olfactory nerve. That's not in the nose - that's part of the brain proper, without any ambiguity at all.

okay, I understand, when people think brain damage, they aren't thinking about sensory inputs, they are thinking about thinking function. I can see how the line would be blurred to someone that cares. but maybe this is an indication of further damage to be investigated.