Un motivo de red es un patrón recurrente y estadísticamente significativo de conexiones dentro de una red. En redes biológicas, sociales y computacionales, los motivos pueden revelar bloques estructurales asociados con funciones o comportamientos particulares.
All networks, including biological networks, social networks, technological networks (e.g., computer networks and electrical circuits) and more, can be represented as graphs, which include a wide variety of subgraphs. One important local property of networks are so-called network motifs, which are defined as recurrent and statistically significant sub-graphs or patterns.