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Impaired sense of smell occurs in a fraction of patients with COVID-19 infection, but its effect on cerebral activity is unknown. Thus, this case report investigated the effect of COVID-19 infection on frontotemporal cortex activity during olfactory stimuli. In this preliminary study, patients who recovered from COVID-19 infection (<i>n</i> = 6) and healthy controls who never contracted COVID-19 (<i>n</i> = 6) were recruited. Relative changes in frontotemporal cortex oxy-hemoglobin during olfactory stimuli was acquired using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The area under curve (AUC) of oxy-hemoglobin for the time interval 5 s before and 15 s after olfactory stimuli was derived. In addition, olfactory function was assessed using the Sniffin’ Sticks 12-identification test (SIT-12). Patients had lower SIT-12 scores than healthy controls (<i>p</i> = 0.026), but there were no differences in oxy-hemoglobin AUC between healthy controls and patients (<i>p</i> > 0.05). This suggests that past COVID-19 infection may not affect frontotemporal cortex function, and these preliminary results need to be verified in larger samples.