Basically, we have 3 parts to the brain. The bottom part of the brain is the Brain Stem.
All animals have a similar brain area.
The brain stem also processes four of our five senses, sight, hearing, taste, and touch. While everything that we ever learned came in through our five senses, learning in school consists of mostly sight and hearing experiences. The middle part of the brain is the Limbic System. If you think of the Brain Stem as a small fist, the Limbic system is like a small donut or bagel sitting on top of the Brain Stem. This system processes the fifth sense, smell.