system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What's happening in our brain during that time when we try to remember something?

When I know something but am not able to remember it my brain sometimes needs seconds/minutes/hours to "find" these information in the "archive". Do we know what's going on during these process and why we have to think some time, cause the information is already somewhere available.
gpt
Memories are stored in the strength of the synapses between neurons.  When you have a hard time remembering, it's because a particular pathway in the brain isn't very strong, and so when you try to connect to that memory, you end up going down the wrong route, and you end up thinking of something besides what you were trying to remember.  If you continue to try to think of it, you just end up reinforcing the wrong pathway, which makes it really difficult to find the right one.  Since these neural pathways for short-term memories lose strength over time, a lot of times you may have to wait for these "wrong" pathways to weaken, before you're able to access the right one.  Either that, or until your brain effectively stumbles upon this memory by accessing it via a different route.

That's also why meditation is useful as a means of clearing your mind; it can allow you to clear out the temporary pathways from short-term memories, and makes it easier to access long-term memories.

That being said, there's still quite a lot we don't know about the human brain, so it's hard to say too much about it with any certainty.