First, we must take in some sort of initial stimuli and information with our  senses. Our nerves then send electrical signals to our brain, where most of these stimuli are discarded. We encounter far too much to pay attention to every small detail that enters our register, so the brain filters out the stimuli it deems unimportant or distracting. The information that our brain chooses to focus on stays in our immediate memory for about 30 seconds (Goodwin, Gibson, & Rouleau, 2020, p. 3-5).

Next, if we focus our attention and cognition on the information in our immediate memory, those neurons increase their firing rates and become stronger and more efficient. These neural pathways hold onto that information in our working memory for between 5 and 20 minutes, and then it can be transported to some sort of output or to the next, more permanent stage. (Goodwin, Gibson, & Rouleau, 2020, p. 6-7).

Once we encode the information, it gets consolidated into our long-term memory – which has the potential to store it indefinitely. The more we retrieve, rehearse, and apply the information, the stronger those neural connections and pathways become. The more attention we give information and the more cognition we use to process it, the easier it will be to retrieve it when we need it in the future. (Goodwin, Gibson, & Rouleau, 2020, p. 7).