Like if I said to you “raise your left arm” you could do it without even really thinking about it. You just will it to happen and it happens. How does that work?
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The basal ganglia (which regulates dopamine and limbic signals) gets an electric and chemical signal from the prefrontal cortex via the mesolimbic pathway and passes a signal to the areas of the limbic system responsible for raising your arm. The limbic system sends electric and chemical signals through your spinal cord to the nerves responsible for raising your arm.
The fact that we generally think with some amount of language here suggests that the connections between the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes help to generate the thought in the prefrontal cortex.
Oftentimes, though, we lift pur arms without thinking, if we have an itch, we don’t think “I have an itch” in language, we just scratch it. So in this case, the basal ganglia is acting without any necessary cognition to scratch the itch through sensation and response to the sensation.
So for the general question, the mind controls the body by the prefrontal cortex (where you think) telling the basal ganglia (where you act) what to do. But it doesn’t always do so, and most limbic actions like walking are done without any real attention from the prefrontal cortex. Learning something abstract also requires the basal ganglia interacting with the prefrontal cortex to reinforce chemical and electric pathways in the whole brain to contemplate the abstract problem. So in this sense, the body also controls the mind.
This probably wasnt eli5 enough but neurology is fuckin never eli5 im sorry. There are also nonbiological theories of mind which I chose not to contemplate here.
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