SummaryWhy are some individuals better at recognising faces? We addressed this question by characterising the brain computations of individuals with extraordinary recognition abilities using high-density electroencephalographic signals and a combination of behavioural tests, artificial neural network models, and machine learning analyses. We found that individual face recognition ability can be decoded from brain activity in an extended temporal interval for face and non-face objects. We show that both visual and semantic brain computations contribute to these individual differences.