To answer your second question, yeah for US schools especially in biomedical sciences like neuro, they tend to come out around those months. I would even argue it's more like December/January for invites. Out of the schools I personally applied to, there are only two schools that have not sent out invites yet. It's also because a lot of the interviews tend to be in January/February so they would need to inform interviewees well in advance (especially if it's in-person)