Using complex network analysis to detect connectome motifs in the larval Drosophila

Analyzing an organism’s connectome allows us to understand how different areas of its brain communicate with each other and how its brain’s structure relates to its function. In this paper, we propose an ad hoc approach for discovering network motifs that may be present in the Drosophila connectome. Our approach introduces a motif concept tailored to the connectome of an organism. This enables us to identify highly complex motifs and abstract them into a few simple types that consider the brain regions to which the involved neurons belong.