When he was growing up, my son Akhil and I were frequently at loggerheads over the time he spent playing video games.
Although he likes to think that it was a "casual pastime", in his final year of medical school he delighted in informing me that his interest in studying surgery as a postgraduate was reinforced by his professor's belief that he had an inherent ability in the subject. And his video gaming had apparently contributed to these skills.
Italian researchers at Sapienza University, in Rome, recently saw improved spatial attention and hand-eye co-ordination in surgeons who played video games for 60 minutes a day, five days a week, for four weeks.
Playing Tennis, Table Tennis and Battle At High Altitude on the Nintendo Wii video-game console allowed them to use physical gestures, rather than pressing a button or moving a joystick, to elicit a response.
In the scientific journal Public Library of Science, researchers reported that the demands for precise movement, depth perception and 3-D visualisation needed to play these games helped surgeons, who after playing showed improvements on 3-D laparoscopic surgery simulators.
Furthermore, Akhil informed me that trainee surgeons can now learn the steps they need to undertake common operating procedures via an iPhone and iPad app called Touch Surgery.
Although I can appreciate this app increases patient safety and promotes training for surgeons, the views of Dr Gregori Patrizi, who co-authored the Wii study, are reassuring. "It's difficult to make the case for academic institutions utilising video-game consoles as didactic tools for surgery."