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It is a skill employed by stand-up comedians, politicians and market traders alike – an effortless way with words that can persuade, cajole and tease.

Now scientists believe they have found evidence of what may lie behind 'the gift of the gab'.

Brain scans on a group of professional comedians has revealed differences in the way the brains of these 'super speakers' work while talking.

The ultimate wheeler dealer, Del Boy's gift of the gab came from a difference in the way his brain worked

Compared to the less silver tongued among us, the super speakers – which also included a barrister and a radio presenter – showed less activity in a key area of the brain involved articulating and comprehending speech.

This suggests that this group were putting less effort into the basic mechanics of speech, allowing them to devote more resources to what they were going to say next.

Dr Joe Devlin, a neuroscientist at University College London, told the Guardian: 'The fact that they show less activity there reflects the fact that they simply find speech less effortful and I suspect part of that has to do with practice. '

The findings may also help to explain why some people dry up completely when asked to speak.

Dr Devlin and his colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging scans of the brains of 17 professional comedians, a radio presenter and barrister.

They were asked to lie in the scanner while talking for 30 seconds on random topics without hesitation, deviation or repetition – a task based on the BBC 4 panel show Just a Minute.

Among the comedians taking part were Robin Ince, who presents a show with physicist Brian Cox, Richard Herring and Helen Keen.

They were compared against a control group of students, who, according to Dr Devlin, were far less adept at the task.

Super speakers were found to have less activity in Broca's region of the brain, shown in the image above

Dr Devlin said: 'One of the participants was given "Scotland" and just said "I've never been there", and that was basically it.

'We asked them to speak about "a perfect cup of tea", topics that should've been easy for everyone.

'A lot of our interest in speaking in fluency has been about things that go wrong, such as stutters. There's been almost no interest in how speech goes right.'

The study revealed that the same areas of the brain were activated when both the comedians and the students were speaking.

Market traders are known for their ability to sell almost anything to anyone due to their talent for speaking

However, the comedians and other super speakers showed lower levels of activity in an area of the brain known as Broca's region.

Perhaps surprisingly, some studies have shown that Broca's region is also underactive in people who stutter.

Writing on his blog about being involved in the research, comedian Richard Herring said: ' I was secretly hoping they would discover that my grey matter was special in some way or had some additional little bend or section which enabled me to be so very funny.

'The testers did say that the control group of non-professional speakers found the idea of talking on a surprise subject very difficult.'