The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) is an experimental paradigm for assessing changes in body ownership. Recent findings in the field suggest that social emotions can influence such changes and that empathic motivation in particular appears to positively predict the malleability of body representations. Since the steroid hormone, testosterone, is well known to interrupt certain forms of empathic processing, in the current study we investigated whether 0.5 mg of testosterone affected ownership indices of the RHI. Forty-nine females participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment in which the RHI was induced. Compared to placebo, testosterone had no effects on the alteration of subjective ownership over the rubber limb or on subjective sense of proprioceptive drift. However, unlike the placebo group, testosterone-treated participants did not display an objective decline in the temperature of their own (hidden) hand following induction of the illusion. These findings suggest that testosterone strengthens implicit but not explicit bodily self-representations. We propose that effective maintenance of implicit body boundaries can be regarded, conceptually, as a primary defensive state facilitating integrity of the self.

中文翻译：

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我身体的领土：睾酮防止橡胶手错觉中的肢体冷却。

橡胶手错觉 (RHI) 是一种用于评估身体所有权变化的实验范式。该领域的最新研究结果表明，社会情绪可以影响这种变化，尤其是移情动机似乎可以积极预测身体表征的可塑性。由于众所周知类固醇激素睾酮会中断某些形式的移情处理，因此在当前的研究中，我们调查了 0.5 毫克睾酮是否会影响 RHI 的所有权指数。49 名女性参与了一项双盲、安慰剂对照实验，其中 RHI 被诱导。与安慰剂相比，睾酮对橡胶肢体主观所有权的改变或本体感觉漂移的主观感觉没有影响。然而，与安慰剂组不同的是，接受睾酮治疗的参与者在产生幻觉后，他们自己（隐藏的）手的温度没有出现客观的下降。这些发现表明，睾酮增强了内隐而非外显的身体自我表现。我们建议，从概念上讲，有效维护隐性身体边界可以被视为促进自我完整性的主要防御状态。