It is very useful and interesting to have research done on memory. We will explore what researchers have found out about memory, so far. The first step, encoding, involves registering information from the environment and processing it into a mental representation. In making a mental representation you are preserving important features of whatever you are trying to remember, such as physical structure and meaning. Usually you are associating the new piece of information with other pieces of information already in memory.
Storage is the retention over time of encoded information.
Cognitive psychologists and neuro-pyschologists are currently studying various biochemical reactions that take place in the brain to store information. Retrieval is recovering the information, after some period of time. It is useful to compare these steps of human information processing to information processing in a computer. The encoding step is analogous to a computer receiving data from a keyboard. The storage step is like saving a file, or storing data in computer memory.