As reported by @mrio, the usage of neurolexID in segment groups is not very explicit. These are used to determine unbranched segments, which get mapped on to NEURON sections. https://github.com/NeuroML/org.neuroml.export/blob/development/src/main/java/org/neuroml/export/neuron/JSONCellSerializer.java#L301 https://github.com/OpenSourceBrain/SmithEtAl2013-L23DendriticSpikes/blob/e3ce16fdf368a4a39df4b7b0f15a8f1a8b9ca4dc/NeuroML2/L23_NoHotSpot.cell.nml#L12084 This should be better documented, or very specific error messages thrown.