It's like our vocal chords, controlled by our brains we create rather specific frequencies, enough so that we can send information to one another. We don't even need to think to do this, but it's all done up in the brain. Think about how long it takes us to learn to talk, it's not even focused learning and we'd begin to pick it up after 6 years. If you really push your mind, and focus that learning, you can pick up on things that are just seemingly impossible to do, there are some instrumentalists alive who have done just that, they've filled their minds up with intricate information, and then execute it. That seems kind of powerful to me, especially combined with the ability to use tools and think creatively.
My brain is certainly not any more powerful than anyone else's, I've been trying to learn to solve physics problems mentally (lol, after I heard that it's quite possible), and it turns out to be quite possible. The more you focus your mind though, the more 'powerful' it becomes, and more often than not, I've left my mind a little bit scattered and fuzzy, it's taking energy to crunch through that and achieve some sort of mental clarity.
I guess it's possible that some information can be programmed into the remaining parts of our brains, but it might just be the other way around, like the appendix, we don't actually need it anymore, it's just a byproduct of our evolution. Maybe long ago we adjusted to reacting to a certain situation in a certain way, and it became somewhat of an instinct. I don't know, I think a lot of that information is more likely to be found in DNA than those bits of the brain.