How good is the brain at image recall?

[petrushka.googol]

My personal experience is that our brain is hard wired to perform certain tasks better.

For example to calculate 14 x 14 our brain might take 0.5 secs and it would be just as fast as a calculator.

 

However place an image of a man with some unique facial characteristics like thick eyebrows, squint eyes, thin moustache, long ears, maybe even cleft palate and place the image for slightly more than 0.1 secs (to eliminate the effect of persistence of vision). How many characteristics do you remember off hand? Difficult to say, but it seems that not all will be remembered at a stretch by most subjects. (taken in a statistical sample).

 

Are images handled differently by the brain as compared to numbers?

And which is more efficient?

How is performance in these areas impaired by those suffering from Alzheimers etc.?

 

Please advise.

 

Thanks in advance.