Figure 1. The hippocampus may store long-term memory for weeks and gradually transfer it to specific regions of the cerebral cortex. The diagram illustrates this process for visual memory. Neural imput travels to the visual cortex and then to the hippocampus, where it is stored for several weeks before it is transferred back to the cortex for long-term memory. The hippocampus has three major synaptic pathways, each capable of long-term potentiation, which is thought to play a role in the storage process.