In humans, the level of consciousness is assessed by quantifying the spatiotemporal complexity of cortical responses using Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI) and related PCIst (st, state transitions). Here we validate PCIst in freely moving rats and mice by showing that it is lower in NREM sleep and slow wave anesthesia than in wake or REM sleep, as in humans. We then show that (1) low PCIst is associated with the occurrence of an OFF period of neuronal silence; (2) stimulation of deep, but not superficial, cortical layers leads to reliable PCIst changes across sleep/wake and anesthesia; (3) consistent PCIst changes are independent of which single area is being stimulated or recorded, except for recordings in mouse prefrontal cortex. These experiments show that PCIst can reliably measure vigilance states in unresponsive animals and support the hypothesis that it is low when an OFF period disrupts causal interactions in cortical networks.