the resting brain and our self selfrelatedness modulates resting state neural activity in cortical midline structures the resting brain shows high neural activity in various regions the defaultmode network chief among them the cortical midline structures cms the psychological correlate of high resting state neural activity in cms remains however unclear though speculatively it has been associated with processing of internallyoriented selfrelatedness we used functional mri to examine internallyoriented selfrelatedness during the resting state period this was indirectly done by letting subjects perceive emotional pictures followed by a fixation cross the very same pictures were then rated subjectively according to their degree of selfrelatedness in a postscanning session this allowed us to correlate the picture ratings of selfrelatedness with signal changes in the subsequent resting state period ie fixation period the emotional pictures degree of selfrelatedness parametrically modulated subsequent resting state signal changes in various cms including ventro and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex this modulation could be distinguished from effects of emotion dimensions eg valence intensity and evoked effects of selfrelatedness during the stimulus period itself the latter being observed rather in subcortical regions eg amygdala ventral striatum and tectum in sum our findings suggest that resting state neural activity in cms is parametrically and specifically modulated by the preceding stimuluss degree of selfrelatedness this lends further support to the presumed involvement of these regions in processing internallyoriented selfrelatedness as distinguished from externallyoriented selfrelatedness