BERKELEY — The NFL’s political action committee has given nearly $300,000 in campaign contributions to 41 of 54 members of a key congressional committee that is reviewing concussion research, according to figures compiled by a Berkeley-based group.

The nonprofit MapLight told this newspaper Wednesday that its analysis of campaign finance data since 2008 has found the NFL’s Gridiron PAC has supported members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee that began informal hearings last week on one of the league’s most pressing safety issues.

Michigan Republican Fred Upton, the committee chair, announced in December lawmakers would conduct a broad review of concussion research this year. The Subcommittee on Oversights and Investigations held a round-table discussion on concussions last week when the NFL for the first time acknowledged a link between the game and the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

Jeff Miller, the league’s senior vice president for Health and Safety Policy, made the statement that an NFL spokesman confirmed the next day.

MapLight reported that since 2008, 17 percent of the Gridiron PAC’s campaign contributions — $292,000 — were given to energy and commerce committee members.

The PAC gave $25,000 to Upton and $8,500 to Democrat Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the committee’s highest-ranking member. It also contributed $1,500 to Pennsylvania Republican Tim Murphy, who heads the oversight and investigations subcommittee.

Staff members of the lawmakers and the NFL could not be immediately reached for comment.

Until Miller’s comments, NFL officials had downplayed the risks of head injuries and cognitive dysfunction. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said at the NFL owners meetings that ended Wednesday in Florida the data doesn’t yet show a connection.

“We don’t have that knowledge and background, and scientifically, so there’s no way in the world to say you have a relationship relative to anything here,” Jones told the Washington Post. “There’s no data that in any way creates a knowledge. There’s no way that you could have made a comment that there is an association and some type of assertion. In most things, you have to back it up by studies. And in this particular case, we all know how medicine is. Medicine is evolving.”

Jones added that the league supports more studies to show a correlation. Researchers at Boston University have found CTE in the brains of 90 of 94 deceased players they examined. Scientists say the sample pool is too small to make definitive conclusions, but former players such as one-time Raiders safety Jarrod Cooper are coming forward to talk about their symptoms from multiple concussions.

Cooper, who is bedridden up to 18 days a month because of severe migraine headaches, told this newspaper last week that he knows at least 15 other former Raiders suffering from similar symptoms.

“This problem goes well beyond the battlefield and the gridiron,” Michigan representative Upton said in December. “It’s a matter of public health.”

Contact Elliott Almond at 408-920-5865.