This reminds me of the neuro-linguistic virus in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. 'Snow Crash' in the novel refers to a version of the virus encoded in a bitmap image which can cause hackers (who are used to processing information in binary form) to suffer brain damage.
This does seem to be a persistent theme in Stephenson's book. I just remembered that in Anathem, Fraa Jad (the Millenarian monk that accompanies Erasmus) perform a similar sort of mediation with long, deep chanting. I don't have the book at hand, but as I recall, Erasmus thinks it's Fraa Jad's way of manipulating his mind.
