To investigate the roles of different dorsal spinal pathways in controlling movements in rats, I performed lesions of specific spinal pathways and measured the behaviour abilities of rats using different sensorimotor behavioural tests. The first experiment was designed to understand the contribution of sensory pathways traveling in the dorsal funiculus during locomotion and skilled movements using sensitive behavioural tests. I demonstrated that ascending sensory fibers play an important role during overground locomotion and contribute to skilled forelimb movements. The second experiment compared the differences in sensorimotor abilities caused by dorsal funicular lesions performed at two different levels of rat spinal cord. My results showed that the pathways present in the cervical and thoracic dorsal funiculus exert different functional effects over control of limb movement during locomotion. The third experiment investigated the compensatory potential of dorsal funicular pathways after dorsolateral funicular injuries in rats. My results showed that dorsal funicular pathways do not compensate for loss of dorsolateral pathways during the execution of locomotor tasks, though there is indirect evidence that rats with dorsolateral funicular lesions might rely more on ascending sensory pathways in the dorsolateral funiculus during skilled forelimb movements. Finally, the fourth experiment was designed to investigate the compensation from dorsolateral funicular pathways after injuries to pyramidal tract in rats. I demonstrated that pathways running in the spinal dorsolateral funiculus do provide compensatory input to spinal circuitry to maintain skilled reaching abilities after lesions of the pyramidal tract but these same pathways do not appear to compensate during either overground locomotion or skilled locomotion. Thus, this compensatory response is task-specific. These results highlight the fact that behavioural context determines the nature of compensation from spared pathways after spinal cord injuries.

This thesis work comprises the working and simulation procedures being involved in simulating motion capture data in AnyBody Modeling System. The motion capture data used in this thesis are ballet movements from dancers of Östgöta ballet and dance academy. The ballet movements taken into consideration are the arabesque on demi-pointe and pirouette. The arabesque on demi-pointe was performed by two dancers but the pirouette is performed by only one dancer. The method involved recording ballet movements by placing markers on the dancer's body and using this motion capture data as input to AnyBody Modeling System to create a musculoskeletal simulation. The musculoskeletal modeling involved creating a very own Qualisys marker protocol for the markers placed on the ballet dancers. Then implementing the marker protocol onto a human model in AnyBody Modeling System by making use of the AnyBody Managed Modeling Repository (TM) and obtain the kinematics from the motion capture. To best fit the human model to the dancer's anthropometry, scaling of the human model is done, environmental conditions such as the force plates are provided. An optimization algorithm is conducted for the marker positions to best fit the dancer's anthropometry by running parameter identification. From the kinematics of the motion capture data, we simulate the inverse dynamics in AnyBody Modeling System. The simulations explain a lot of parameters that describe the ballet dancers. Results such as the center of mass, the center of pressure, muscle activation, topple angle are presented and discussed. Moreover, we compare the models of the dancers and draw conclusions about body balance, effort level, and muscles activated during the ballet movements.