Well, I'm tired to the point that I'm not going to put things in perfect order here... but I'm going to take a stab at answering the basic queries in some fashion.
There isn't really any unlockable aspects of the brain, they are all there for the taking. Personality traits (frontal lobe) unfortunately have a lot of say in exactly how much potential is utilized.
Dreams can serve as a way of cementing certain concepts in your brain; sometimes, however, they are really just a "playful" moment where the mind is connecting various memories stashed around the brain.
Quality, restful sleep, can also serve to hand-off recent memories stored in short-term memory to the parts of the brain that store long-term memory.
You can think of memory as little chunks of information that really are stored fairly randomly in the brain. Personality, which I mentioned earlier, can alter the cataloging system of our personal memory library. I say this because everyone may remember the same exact thing in a slightly different way. Someone might recall the situation, perfectly, based on an audio reference; others, however, may only be able to remember it [to the same degree of recollection, mind you] using visual references. If it's stored any differently in these situations, I have no idea... and I don't know if anyone has ever determined precisely whether that changes memory storage.
The big question is the efficiency of memory recall. How one unconsciously stores memories is partly based on how one consciously (or sub-consciously, I'd imagine) experiences things. Everyone views the world the same, physically... yet everyone sees things differently. How we interpret our environment can be entirely different, but it isn't something we really recognize as fact; we assume everyone experiences things the same way.
Let's roll with your statement regarding the fretboard. Practice makes perfect, right?
But how one practices, how one invests effort across the various tasks, and more importantly, what sort of mental discipline you employ... I guess that's one way to say it... in other words, everyone has tricks they use to develop memories and memory recall. It's tied to the way you focus during whatever it is you do. Say, one person might focus on the spatial location of their hands in relation to everything else (how far up or down your hand and fingers are on the fretboard, for instance)... but another might focus more on the specific output one is rewarded with based on their input (the actual notes produced based on your positioning; that would be an aurally-focused method).
You can see that is essentially a boiled-down description of focusing on either the aural or visual senses. It's rarely one or the other, nor is memory only tied to two of the five senses.
Personality is definitely only part of the equation. In fact, personality can be said to be simply the observable traits of an individual's neurological wiring. It's not as simple as saying your personality is determined by your wiring. You also can't say your personality can be used by others to determine your brain's wiring, or your potential for that matter. Nature v. Nurture - it's a complicated dance.
Moving on (because I fear I could talk that part of the discussion forever) on to the actual wiring aspect... I can't speak to the actual qualities of total neurons in specific regions of the brain or anything... that's deep and very complex neuroscience out of reach for even many neuroscience PhDs... but personality does have quite a bit to owe to the total neurotransmitter profile. It's a scary dance, and so many characteristics are determined solely by the balance of neurotransmitters swimming to and fro' in the brain. Changing the overall ratio of specific neurotransmitters has been proven to change personality traits, and more specifically, performance potential. The strength of memory recall (different from the ability to actually store memories - you can store thousands of memories and sit on your deathbed without ever having recalled those memories once in your life) can definitely be changed by altering neurotransmitter levels.
That leaves the concept of intelligence undiscussed. And that, I'll leave for someone else, as I'm passing out right now.
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