Сетевой мотив — recurring, statistically significant pattern of connections within a network. В biological, social и computational networks motifs могут выявлять structural building blocks, associated with particular functions or behaviors.
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.