Much of what we know about visual processing in the brain is based on neural data collected in anesthetized animals assuming that the essential aspects of the computations are preserved under such conditions. However, recent findings support an alternative view that visual processing depends upon ongoing activity, which is significantly altered in anesthetized preparations. Therefore, it is critical to assess how well the characteristics of neural responses to various stimuli in the anesthetized animal can predict responses in the awake animal. We collected multi-electrode recordings from the primary visual cortex of adult rats under different levels of anesthesia and while awake. Anesthesia was maintained by isoflourane concentrations between 0.6% to 2.0%, ranging from very lightly anesthetized to deeply anesthetized. Isolated unit and local field potential (LFP) activity were collected from sixteen electrodes. Responses were compared between conditions of darkness (the spontaneous condition), a natural scene movie, and full-field white-black modulation at frequencies of 1Hz, 2Hz, 4Hz, and 8Hz. There were significant, up to two-fold modulations of measurements of average firing rates, bursting rates, power spectral densities, population sparseness, and coherence between stimulus conditions in awake and anesthetized animals. However, there were strong interactions between the particular stimuli used and the condition of the animal, and due to these interactions responses in the awake condition could not be well predicted by the anesthetized responses. While, in general, coherence decreased with lower concentrations of isoflurane as suggested by previous findings, coherence in the theta band actually peaked at 4 Hz visual stimulus modulation while awake, and that coherence in the gamma and alpha bands reached a minimum at 1-2Hz stimulation while under anesthesia. We suggest that anesthesia selectively modulates the neural dynamics in the cortex, and thus the patterns of visually-evoked responses in the awake animal and under anesthesia are not related to each other in a straightforward manner.