Olfaction is a critical sensory system that is vulnerable to damage. Humans may experience olfactory dysfunction due to infection, trauma, aging, neurodegenerative disease, or other causes. At present, both a detailed understanding of pathobiology of certain types of olfactory disorders and specific, effective treatment options remain limited. The theme of this Symposium is “olfaction and its relation to the other senses”. Here, we consider how disorders of other sensory systems have been studied, current management approaches that have been employed, and compare these to the current state for olfaction. In other systems such as vision or hearing, etiologies may be categorized as central or peripheral, or as conductive versus sensorineural, or mixed. Specific treatments are aimed accordingly; for instance conductive hearing problems may be amenable to middle ear surgery, while sensorineural problems due to cochlear hair cell degeneration may be treated with a cochlear implant to directly stimulate the auditory nerve. However, recent efforts at regenerative strategies for the peripheral auditory system, combining drugs targeting specific signaling pathways, have had limited success. In the visual system, viral gene therapies have been applied for genetic retinal diseases due to loss-of-function alleles. Future treatment strategies for olfactory disorders may be considered in the context of the lessons learned from the visual and auditory systems. Finally, an active area of research involves defining the roles of specific sensory impairments on the development of cognitive decline, and potential strategies to protect or prevent this decline.