Placing the keystone: the LIMBIC Military and Tactical Athlete Research Study

The LIMBIC Military and Tactical Athletic Research Study (MATARS) framework was established to confirm and extend understanding of concussion with initial studies driven by clinical data collected between 2015 and 2020 in a collegiate sports setting. The LIMBIC MATARS framework will be leveraged to apply gold-standard and innovative research designs to advance the science of concussion. This manuscript provides the background, methodology, and initial demographic data associated with the LIMBIC MATARS. Consensus-based common data elements were used to conduct a retrospective chart review, specific to collegiate athletes diagnosed with concussions between 2015 and 2020 at 11 universities. A final sample of 1,311 (47.8% female) concussions were diagnosed during the five-year study period from athletes participating in a variety of National Collegiate Athlete Association (NCAA) sports. The LIMBIC MATARS demographic data, align with the NCAA and other pioneering multi-site concussion-related studies in terms of biological sex, race and ethnicity, and sport participation. This pragmatic, methodological approach was used to address several a priori hypotheses related to concussion, align with other multi-site studies of concussion, and establish a consortium for future investigations.